


a third collection (is charmingly excessive)

by shineyma



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fusion, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Betrayal, Brainwashing, Clairvoyance, Crack, Episode Related, F/M, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, Hydra Grant Ward, Hydra Jemma Simmons, Jealousy, Kid Fic, Kidnapping, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Possessive Behavior, Pregnancy, Rescue, Sexual Content, Ward x Simmons Summer
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-08-28
Updated: 2017-04-02
Packaged: 2018-04-17 15:44:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 74
Words: 71,326
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4672241
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shineyma/pseuds/shineyma
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Another collection of responses to prompts I receive on tumblr, because the second got out of control, too. Mostly Ward/Simmons in nature. More tags will be added as they become relevant.</p><p>New on 4/2/17: Chapters 58 (a kiss to make up) through 74 (author ID challenge)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Five sentence part five

**Author's Note:**

> I accepted a whole bunch of five-sentence fic prompts--the kind where the prompter provides the first sentence and I write...at least five more. Usually it was a lot more than five, tbh--on my tumblr, and I will be posting them in chunks because there were a lot. So here's part five!
> 
> Once again, this isn't all of the five sentence fills. Several of them got out of control, and will be given their own chapters. Just fyi.

_meghan84 asked: Sentence meme "how drunk are you?!"_

“Only a little!” Simmons promises earnestly. She hold her hands up, palms facing each other, about two inches apart. Then she frowns down at them, reconsiders, and widens the distance to nearly a foot. “This much.”

“Really?” Grant asks, as she beams at him proudly. “That counts as only a little drunk?”

She nods. “Yes.”

The fact that she’s smiling at him and holding a civil conversation—instead of, say, trying to shoot him, run, or otherwise make trouble—puts paid to her lie pretty effectively.

But hey, he’s not gonna look a gift horse in the mouth. Simmons is all alone and drunk enough to forget that they’re enemies. It’s a lucky break; who’s he to question it?

“In that case,” he says, taking the stool next to her, “Can I buy you another drink?”

She bounces happily in her seat, and as he motions the bartender over, he makes a mental note to have some aspirin on hand for her in the morning. This is shaping up to be the easiest kidnapping ever; the least he can do is repay the favor by helping her with the killer hangover she’s sure to have.

 

_ilosttrackofthings asked: "And then it exploded."_

Grant scans the room, once again taking in the burnt remnants of Jemma’s lab—and, more importantly, the burnt remnants of the  _very expensive_  equipment that fills it.

“It exploded,” he repeats flatly. “Spontaneously.”

She nods solemnly. “Yes.”

“And this was  _after_  all of your experiments were moved to another lab for no particular reason?” he asks.

“That’s right.”

“Meaning you’ve lost tens of thousands of dollars worth of equipment,” he continues. “But all of your science is safely intact.”

“Yes.” She gives him a sweet smile. “It’s quite the fortunate coincidence, isn’t it?”

Jemma doesn’t even  _believe_  in coincidences—but he doesn’t need to know  _that_  to know she’s lying. This was absolutely deliberate.

“So I guess it’s also a coincidence that this spontaneous explosion happened right after my meeting with SHIELD?” he asks.

Her smile sharpens a little. “Yes. Funny how these things happen, isn’t it?”

He should’ve known she wouldn’t let that skirmish—or, actually, the fact that Fitz was injured in it—pass unremarked. As far as retaliation goes, hitting him in the budget is new, but at least she’s moved past withholding sex. (Mostly, he’s guessing, because turning him down is one of the very few things she’s not good at.)

“Yeah,” he sighs. “Funny.”

 

_Anonymous asked: "You know, you remind me a little of Wolfgang from Sense8."_

“Thank you,” Grant says graciously.

Skye blinks at him. “Wait, you actually know who that is?”

“Sure,” he says, crouching to double-check her restraints. “I love that show. Wolfgang’s my favorite.”

“Of course he is,” she mutters, pouting. “You’re both  _insane_.”

“That thing with the rocket launcher,” he shakes his head, smiling to himself. “Classic.”

“I hate you so much,” Skye says, head thumping against the back of her chair. “So much.”

 

_thestarfishdancer asked: "Well, I'm sorry I hurt your pride when I wouldn't say it was the best I ever had, but you'd know if I was lying anyway."_

“You would,” Grant agrees. “She’s a terrible liar.”

Ortilla and Hicks exchange wary looks at the placid tone; Jemma is certain they’re both expecting violence from Grant, and it seems to discomfit them that it’s being drawn out so long.

Not that she can entirely blame them. It’s a given that Grant encountering  _any_  of her ex-lovers is bound to end bloodily, and for it to be this  _particular_  man, whom she very nearly married…

It’s half honesty and half the need to try and salvage the situation that leads her to add, “This is Grant, by the way.  _He’s_  the best I’ve ever had.”

Nathaniel—who still hasn’t relinquished his hold on her hand, despite her repeated attempts to break it—gives Grant a disdainful once-over.

“Really, Jems?” he asks. “This… _meathead_? Does he even have a Master’s degree?”

“No,” Grant says—still in that placid tone. “I do, however, have an army.”

He jerks his chin at Ortilla and Hicks, who move forward at once. Faster than Jemma can track, Nathaniel is restrained and on the ground, his grip on her—and, judging by that awful crack she just heard, his hand itself—broken.

Grant’s expression as he looks down at her former fiancé is enough to chill Jemma’s blood. It’s not as though she has any lingering attachment to Nathaniel—in point of fact, there’s a not-insignificant part of her that is honestly looking forward to seeing him punished for his presumption in approaching her today—but that look on Grant’s face never means anything good.

“Grant,” she says, and, when that fails to draw his attention, slides her arms around his waist. “He can wait.”

His eyes cut to her, and there’s something very dangerous in them. “Can he?”

“Yes,” she says, “He can. You promised me a proper date, remember? You’re not allowed to cancel on me this late.”

For a heartbeat, Grant’s expression remains dangerous, and she sees Hicks and Ortilla tense in her peripheral vision. Then he relaxes, and his arms come up to wrap around her.

“I did promise,” he says, and nods to Hicks. “Call in a team, get him taken back to HQ.” The smile he aims at Nathaniel is truly terrifying. “I’ll deal with him tomorrow.”


	2. talking to the dead

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another five sentence fill. This one gets its own chapter because it's part of the [medium!Jemma verse](http://archiveofourown.org/works/4580082).

_Anonymous asked: There are times when the ability to talk to the dead is actually beneficial._

This…is not one of them.

“Don’t get me wrong,” the woman who popped up the second they set foot in the Hub adds, “It was definitely the biggest mistake of my life, what with how he killed me and all. But still. No regrets.” She sighs happily, giving Ward a look so lustful it nearly makes Jemma blush. “ _That_  is a man who knows what to do with his hands. And his tongue. And his—”

“Lalalala,” Thomas nearly shouts. His hands are covering his ears, and his usually sweet face is twisted into an expression of utter disgust. “I can’t hear you!”

“ _I_  can,” Jessy says eagerly. “Give me  _all_  of the details, please!”

Jemma would like, more than anything, to beg the woman not to. Unfortunately, she’s surrounded by her team, all of whom are on edge after Coulson’s kidnapping and their subsequent adventure in the desert. Addressing thin air with pleas to  _stop_  sharing stories of Ward’s sexual prowess is liable to get her sectioned.

Of course, blushing—as she truly is by now—is just as likely to invite questions. What she needs is a reason to leave.

“I,” she starts, and then hesitates as the rest of the team looks to her. It’s impossible to think with Ward’s eyes fixed on her the way they are—or, more precisely, with Ward’s eyes fixed on her and his dead conquest happily reminscing about her inability to walk the day after their first encounter. “I—”

“Simmons?” May asks, frowning.

Jemma has nothing.

“I am finished with this day,” she says, and turns on her heel. “Goodnight.”


	3. saying no (Grant/Kara)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another five sentence fill. This one gets its own chapter because the pairing is Grant/Kara--not a single Jemma to be found!

_Anonymous asked: "Does the Mafia provide benefits to their employees?"_

“I doubt it,” Kara says. “And it doesn’t matter anyway, because we aren’t joining the mafia.”

Grant rolls onto his side to face her, expression earnest. “But what if—”

“No,” she interrupts, and it takes a lot of effort to hold back a smile. Not because of the mafia thing—that is a  _terrible_  idea—but because of the  _no_.

She likes saying no. She likes the sound of it, the weight of it on her tongue, the way it shapes her mouth. For so long it wasn’t an option, wasn’t even part of her vocabulary, but now? Now she can say it as often as she wants.

So she says it again. “No.”

“We’re gonna need  _something_  to do with ourselves,” he argues. “And if you think about it, our respective skillsets—”

“I don’t care,” she says firmly. “We are  _not_  joining the mafia.”

“Okay,” he says. “Fine, then.”

Her eyes narrow. Even though he’s giving in, there’s no resignation on Grant’s face. Actually, he’s smiling—widely—and there’s a proud edge to it that makes her think he maybe only pressed the issue so she could fight him on it. This time, she  _can’t_  hold back a smile of her own.

He does this a lot—suggests things he knows she won’t like just so she gets to say no—and it always makes her so warm inside. She’s sure it’ll get old eventually, start to get on her nerves, but that’s okay. Annoyance is new, too; she’s kind of looking forward to it.

And in the meantime…

She shoves at his shoulder, prompting him to roll onto his back again, and then swings one knee over his hips to straddle him. His smile shifts, pride melting into something smug, as she slides her hands over his chest.

“I know what you’re doing,” she says.

“Planning for our future?” he asks innocently.

He does  _that_  a lot, too—talks about them in the plural. It’s always  _us_  and  _we_  and  _our_ , like he takes it for granted that whatever happens next, it’ll be happening to both of them.

She loves him for it.

Compliance was a lot of things—certainty, obedience, unthinking happiness—but at the heart of it was loneliness. Kara did everything she was told because she craved Whitehall’s approval—because she wanted to please him so he’d keep her near him.

And even though she  _knows_  it was fake, knows it was programmed into her the same damn way she programs the DVR to record  _Army Wives_  (because Grant hates it, and she can do that—can watch something she knows he hates), the loneliness is the one thing from her brainwashed days she hasn’t been able to totally shake.

But that’s okay, too. Grant is always right here with her, reassuring and loving and gently easing her towards being a person of her own making, and the loneliness can’t beat him. Nothing can.

“Being sweet,” she says. She traces the shape of the scars on his side, enjoying the way his abs flutter in response as he sucks in a breath. “You’re always so sweet.”

His smile softens, and he reaches up to slide his hand into her hair and cup the back of her neck.

“Only with you,” he says, and tugs her down for a kiss.

There’s a promise there, one that warms her just as much as his teasing does, but she doesn’t dwell on it. She falls into the kiss and lets her thoughts fade into pure sensation—into the taste of him, the weight of his hand on her neck, the gentle slide of his rough fingers up her side.

This, she’s positive, will  _never_  get old.


	4. "When are you going to introduce Sonja to us?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another five sentence fill. This one gets its own chapter because it a) got long and b) is mostly self-indulgent nonsense. If you don't like my HYDRA OCs, you might wanna give this one a miss.

_Anonymous asked: "When are you going to introduce Sonja to us, Luis?"_

“Fuck off,” Ortilla says, aiming a kick at Hicks.

Hicks doesn’t bother to move; he’s far enough away from Ortilla that there was never any chance the kick would connect, not without Ortilla moving closer first. The two of them are sitting against opposite walls; there’s at least four feet of space between them, and really, Ortilla barely even twitched towards Hicks.

As he doesn’t truly seem the sort of man who takes a half-hearted approach to violence, Jemma can only assume that the same kind of lethargy that she’s experiencing has fallen over her cellmates, as well. 

Perhaps it’s the heat. Their cell is without windows, and the air is thick and stale, doing nothing to counter the heatwave that’s fallen over the entire western United States this past month. She feels fairly soaked through with sweat; even fear seems too much effort—moving is certainly so.

Still, her back is aching something terrible, so she shifts a little on the stone bench currently serving as her bed. In the process, she happens to meet Markham’s eyes.

“Sonja is Ortilla’s girlfriend,” he explains. His face and voice are both perfectly serious, but something about the crinkles at the corners of his eyes suggest to her that he’s mocking Ortilla.

An impression quickly reinforced by Ortilla’s, “Fuck. Off.”

Markham raises an eyebrow at him and earns a scowl in return.

“She’s not my girlfriend,” Ortilla mutters, crossing his arms over his chest.

They’re lovely arms—and it’s a lovely chest. Both are currently bare, owing to the fact that Jemma is wearing his shirt.

She was terrified when she was first shoved into this cell; having been kidnapped away from the beach, she had nothing but her bikini, and it was clear that her captors were expecting—if not  _hoping_ —that the three large and intimidating men they were already holding would take care of the _torture_  portion of her imprisonment for them.

Instead, the three of them have been nothing but kind. Ortilla—as the largest—gave her his shirt to wear, while Hicks and Markham’s shirts are currently bundled together and serving as her pillow. None of them were willing to accept the logic that, having a dress in the form of Ortilla’s shirt, she really didn’t need the other two. 

She’s still somewhat puzzled by their insistence, but she’s also very appreciative. Even  _thinking_  of what she might be suffering were her cellmates men of less character is enough to twist her stomach into knots.

The conversation has moved on during her distraction; talk has turned to someone named Evie.

“Just saying,” Ortilla says, “You got no right to rag me about Sonja when you  _still_  haven’t made a move on Evie.”

“He’s got a point,” Hicks agrees. He slumps lower against the wall so he can stretch his leg far enough to poke Markham’s foot with his. “It’s been forever, man. This is starting to get sad.”

Markham looks unimpressed. “Does dating Sonja come with risk of  _brutal murder_?”

Ortilla makes the same annoying clucking sound Skye always uses when mocking someone for being ‘chicken’, and Jemma sighs to herself. She appreciates the effort they’re making to put her at ease—and she knows that’s what this is; these don’t strike her as the sort of men who sit around talking about their love lives at  _all_ , let alone when they’ve been taken prisoner—but it’s doing nothing for her headache.

“The boss isn’t gonna  _kill_  you,” Hicks says, though he doesn’t look as certain as his words would suggest. “You’re his favorite.”

“Evie’s his favorite,” Markham corrects. “Which means making a move is a fucking stupid idea.”

“Come on, hombre,” Ortilla says. “Man up. What’ve you got to lose?”

“My  _life_.”

“Well, that’s a risk I’m willing to take,” Hicks says, tipping his head thoughtfully. “If you die, we get promoted, right?”

“If I die, you morons’ll get yourselves killed crossing the boss within the month,” Markham says dryly.

Not for the first time, Jemma wonders precisely for whom these men might work, but—also not for the first time—decides she’s better off not knowing. She has her suspicions, none of them good, and as she’s going to be trapped with these men for the foreseeable future—

The entire cell rocks around them, effectively derailing her train of thought. The movement is accompanied by the sound of a very near explosion, and all three of her cellmates shoot to their feet.

“About damn time,” Ortilla says. He cracks his neck and rolls his shoulders, all but bouncing on his toes in excitement. “Think they’re leaving any for us?”

As Jemma sits up—slowly; her back is a throbbing mass of bruises right now—Markham gives her a look she can’t decipher.

“Doubt it,” he says.

All of her questions—about her cellmates  _and_  about the look on Markham’s face—are answered the moment the door to their cell opens to reveal her ex-husband.

“There you are,” Grant says. “I’ve been looking for you everywhere.”

This is clearly a rescue operation, but as Grant crosses the cell to help her to her feet and hold her close with blood-stained hands, Jemma has the unfortunate feeling that her captivity is only just beginning.


	5. girls' day

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thestarfishdancer asked: "I was thinking about your marvellous OCs and how much I love their interactions in the various Grant and Jemma 'verses, and that got me thinking about how I've seen a lot of Jemma interacting with Grant's men, but not a lot of with his women employees. I'd love to see a piece (or different pieces, if you want to play in multiple 'verse sandboxes!) where we get to see how Jemma and the Hydra women interact, whether they get along like houses on fire or just... don't. Please & thanks! :)"
> 
> Fair warning: more self indulgent nonsense below!

“Do I want to know?”

Jemma blinks, startled out of her contemplation of the possible chemical properties of the nominal salad dressing she’s found in the back of the fridge.

“Do you want to know what?” she asks. She’s tempted to add the salad dressing to the  _keep_  pile, but there’s a rule about experimentation on food, and while she doesn’t generally allow Grant to dictate her work, she thinks she’s in enough trouble already. So, with some regret, she drops the dressing into the bin.

Warrington, currently leaning back against the kitchen island, waits until she’s done so before clarifying.

“I was supposed to be in Argentina for another three weeks,” she says. “So, do I want to know why the boss called me home early and shuffled the schedule to put me back on your rotation a whole month before I was scheduled?”

Aldridge is cleaning guns at the kitchen table, but at the question, she twists in her seat to frown at Warrington.

“You too?” she asks, and then switches her frown to Jemma. “My op in Japan had barely started.”

Jemma starts to answer, thinks better of it, and returns her attention to cleaning the refrigerator.

“I’m going to need to send someone out once I’ve finished,” she says to herself. “I’ve no ingredients to bake with.”

She gives herself away with it, of course—poorly disguised evasion  _and_  reference to stress baking? She might as well take out an advert in the  _Times_  that something’s wrong—but realistically, she was never going to be able to hide this.

“Oh, man,” Warrington sighs, rubbing at her forehead. “I definitely don’t wanna know.”

“I do,” Aldridge says eagerly, and leaves her seat to join Warrington at the counter. “What gives?”

Jemma stalls for a moment, shuffling several jars of jam around until they’re properly arranged by hue. She’s considering doing the same to the juices on the top shelf, but the two pairs of eyes boring into her back get to her before she can do more than poke at the papaya juice.

So, with a sigh, she shuts the refrigerator door and turns to face her guards.

“It’s possible,” she says, delicately, “That Grant is under the mistaken impression that I’ve developed an attraction to Perez.”

Warrington and Aldridge both stare.

“I was right,” Warrington says after a long moment. “I didn’t wanna know.”

“Is Manuel still alive?” Aldridge asks. There’s a distinct tone of morbid fascination to the question, and it earns her an eye-roll from Warrington.

Jemma winces. “Probably?”

“Probably?” Warrington echoes.

“I’m not certain,” Jemma admits. Feeling restless under her guards’ combined gazes, she crosses the kitchen to perch on one of the stools at the bar. Warrington and Aldridge follow silently. “The entire discussion was getting…out of hand, shall we say, and Markham intervened. Unfortunately, Grant wasn’t in much of a mood to listen to reason.”

Warrington tips her head back to stare at the ceiling as though praying for patience, while Aldridge leans forward.

“Is  _Markham_  still alive?” she asks, this time sounding more concerned than fascinated.

“Yes,” Jemma says definitively. This she’s positive of; Evie has been in and out of the penthouse constantly, as is her wont when Grant is away, and surely if Markham were dead—or suffering horrible torture—she wouldn’t be nearly as friendly as usual. “And in any case, we’ve wandered from the point. Which is that all of my male guards have been removed from my rotation. Indefinitely.”

Warrington pinches the bridge of her nose and mutters something in a language Jemma tentatively identifies as Arabic. Perhaps not, however, as she’s nearly positive that Arabic isn’t one of Aldridge’s languages, and she’s laughing.

“So,” she says, leaning back on her stool and hooking her feet under the bottom rung, “When Lepley said you haven’t left the penthouse since Monday…?”

“I’ve been confined to quarters,” Jemma confirms, and then amends, “Or rather, I decided to confine myself—just until Grant calms down a little. It seemed safest for everybody.”

“The men of HYDRA thank you, I’m sure,” Warrington says, shaking her head. She’s slumped against the bar, and Jemma gets the impression that, were she not on duty, she would have already finished at least two drinks by now.

“And a fair number of the women,” Aldridge adds, then blinks. “Hey, is that why Brannock didn’t get called back?”

Annika Brannock is openly bisexual, something about which Grant only cares when he’s feeling possessive—or rather, more possessive than usual.

“Yes.”

“That makes more sense,” Aldridge muses. “I thought she was in disgrace or something.”

Warrington rolls her eyes.

“Actually, it explains a  _lot_ ,” Aldridge says.

“Such as why Grant’s taken off for Russia without notice?” Jemma guesses.

“Such as why he’s wiped three of Strucker’s bases off the  _map_  without notice,” Warrington corrects.

“Such as why you’re  _limping_ ,” Aldridge says, giving Jemma a friendly nudge.

Her face goes hot. “Ah. Yes.”

The misunderstanding about Perez resulted in a resurgence of Grant’s berserker rage, of a severity she didn’t even realize was  _possible_  so long after his initial exposure to the staff. And something else she didn’t know, as she and Grant weren’t precisely on sexual terms back when he was first exposed, was that the enhanced strength came with a side of enhanced  _stamina_.

Which is to say, her attempt to calm him through sex was both a complete failure and a marvelous success. His anger didn’t abate in the slightest, but he did give her more orgasms than she thought she was physically capable of  _having_  in twenty-four hours. By the time they were done, she could barely even  _move_ , let alone walk.

It’s probably just as well that he took off to rain destruction on the other side of the world the very next morning. She might not have  _survived_  another round of such marathon sex.

(Though there are certainly worse ways to die.)

“Are you blushing?” Aldridge sounds almost gleeful. “You  _never_  blush! That must’ve been some  _really_ amazing se— _ow_ , Warrington!”

Warrington, having just elbowed Aldridge very hard in the side, meets her glare dead on.

“Stop it,” she says. “This is protection duty, not a slumber party.”

Aldridge pauses, then turns to Jemma with wide eyes. “We should totally—”

“We are  _not_  having a slumber party,” Warrington interrupts.

“You’re not the boss of me,” Aldridge says, pointedly giving Warrington her back. “Only the boss is the boss of me…well, and Markham is, too, I guess, but since they’re  _both_  out of town…”

Jemma can’t hold back a laugh as affection swells in her chest. It’s been months since Aldridge or Warrington were on her detail—they’ve both been away, doing actual  _work_  for Grant—and she’s missed them both terribly. Just as she’s missed Lepley and Brannock.

Evie is her only consistent female company these days, and while Jemma is very fond of her…well, more never hurts.

“A girl’s night sounds nice,” she says, cutting through the debate Aldridge and Warrington are having about the chain of command. “Though perhaps it should wait until Grant is feeling a little less…”

“Homicidal?” Aldridge offers innocently.

“Unreasonable,” Jemma corrects, though not without a smile.

Warrington’s own smile is decidedly sardonic. “Probably a good idea.”

The comment, naturally, sparks a new debate—this time about why Warrington is only willing to consider Aldridge’s ideas as good ones when they’ve got Jemma’s approval—and Jemma leans back against the bar, letting their voices wash over her.

She loves all of her guards, truly—and platonically, no matter what impression Grant might currently be under—but she does hold a special place in her heart for these two. A girl’s night will be just the thing, once Grant has had the chance to cool down a little.

So…in a year or two, perhaps.


	6. "Why do you have blood on your knees?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another five sentence fill that got out of control.

_Anonymous asked: "Why do you have blood on your knees?"_

Grant smiles, but there’s no humor in it. In point of fact, he looks furious, eyes tight in a way she’s only seen once before—the day he was exposed to the berserker staff.

Oh, dear.

“Funny you should ask,” he says, and then looks to her guards. “Out. Now.”

They scramble to obey, sensibly, and the door closes behind the last of them with a click that seems to echo in the silence of the lab.

“Grant,” she starts, but her voice dies in her throat as he moves.

Instinct has her retreating as he steps into her space, because he’s  _looming_  and there’s blood on his knees (and his hands, she notes) and something terrifying in his eyes. He doesn’t stop her from moving away, but he does follow, and in short order she finds herself backed up against a counter.

“Grant,” she tries again, “What—?”

His hands land on her hips, and the force behind his grip silences her.

“John’s dead,” he says.

Ah. That explains…quite a bit.

She has to swallow against the bile rising in her throat before she can ask, “Is he?”

“Yeah.” Grant’s grip on her tightens, but it’s the pure fury in his eyes that has her shrinking back against the counter. “Funny thing, he had just taken the GH-325.  _Your_  GH-325.”

“That’s…quite the coincidence,” she says, a touch shakily.

His laugh is dark—and not at all amused.

“I don’t think it is,” he says. “I think he’s dead  _because_  of the GH-325. I think you sabotaged it.”

The breath Jemma draws in is uneven. Her heart is pounding like a jackhammer, and it’s beginning to make her light-headed.

She could prevaricate, but what’s the use? She always knew she would get caught—that she would suffer for the choice she made. There’s no point in delaying the inevitable.

“I did,” she admits. “Quite severely, I’m afraid.”

Grant’s face, impossibly, darkens even further, and for a moment she honestly thinks he’s about to strike her. 

Part of her almost wishes he would.

Even after everything, after all of this—after being kidnapped, held prisoner, subjected to an untold number of threats, and forced into working for the enemy—she hasn’t yet managed to shed her feelings for him. She has, in fact, fallen prey to them repeatedly, to the extent that she’s spent several nights in his bed instead of her cell. And though she’d love to be able to deny it, she can’t change the fact that each and every one of those nights was  _her_  doing, not his.

Despite everything, despite knowing the truth of him and what he’s done, she can’t stop loving him. And he’s been no help in that regard, always looking at her and touching her with such clear affection—being so  _open_  with his own feelings, in a way she never would’ve believed him capable of, back on the Bus.

Even  _that_ —the obvious difference between the real him and the one she fell in love with—hasn’t shaken her stubborn heart.

Perhaps violence will.

But he doesn’t hit her. His hands flex on her hips, but don’t move from them. A muscle ticks in his jaw as he glares down at her.

“I told you—”

“I told  _you_ ,” she interrupts, before he can remind her of the usual litany of promises and threats. “I don’t take orders from HYDRA.”

“And what do you think?” Grant asks. “That they’re just gonna let this go?”

“I think that I have a duty to protect people,” she says. “And by ending John Garrett’s life, I am most certainly doing so.”

And she can be proud of that, no matter what happens next. (And no matter that part of her is sick, because that’s a  _life_ , a real human life that she’s ended, deliberately and with intent. It was the right thing to do, but that doesn’t make it easy.)

“That’s what’s most important to you?” he asks. “Protecting people, even if it means crossing HYDRA?” One of his hands leaves her hip in favor of twining in her hair. “Even if it means crossing  _me_?”

Her mouth goes dry. “Yes. Even then.”

He cups the back of her head and leans in, and for all that the kiss he presses to her forehead is soft, it feels like a threat. None of the rage has left his face.

“You’re gonna pay for this,” he murmurs, and smiles against her skin as her breath catches. “But don’t worry. I’ll be there every step of the way.”

It’s couched as reassurance, but this, too, is most certainly a threat.


	7. sleepless

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another five sentence fill. This one gets its own chapter because it's related to an actual fic I'll be posting tomorrow/later today.

_Anonymous asked: Without Grant, Jemma sleeps with her back to the wall and surrounded in a cocoon of pillows._

It doesn’t come anywhere close to the warmth and security she found in his arms—she never thought it would. Everything is so distinctly  _wrong_ : her bed too small and too large at once, the wall too hard and her pillows too soft, cotton and brick no substitute for warm skin against hers.

Nothing and no one can replace Grant. But he’s not an option, not anymore, and so she must simply learn to adapt.

She thinks it will get easier, as time passes and she adjusts to sleeping alone again.

It doesn’t.

Months pass. Sleeping remains a challenge. She exhausts herself before bed—runs for miles on her treadmill or works long into the night—and it doesn’t help. She seeks comfort in other arms—a one night stand here, a sleepover with Skye there—and remains unsatisfied.

And even when she  _can_  sleep, it’s just not right. She feels unsettled—unfettered—and her dreams are full of restless wanderings, endless corridors with countless doors she spends all night opening, looking for something.

(Some _one_ , really. But she pretends not to make the connection—it’s easier that way.)

The others are all aware of her trouble sleeping, but they attribute it to nightmares. She lets them.

A lie of omission is better that admitting she’s still longing for the man who stars in all of  _their_  nightmares.


	8. things you said collection

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Over on my tumblr, I did a prompt meme for prompts beginning with "things you said." Some of them were short and are collected below. As always, the longer ones get their own chapters.

_Anonymous asked: Biospecialist, 23: Things you said after you found me._

“You’re okay, baby, you’re fine. I got you.”

Grant’s voice is steady—even—but there’s no disguising the fury in it. On any other day, it’s likely Jemma would be terrified; as it is, she finds it absurdly comforting.

Not nearly as comforting as she finds his embrace, however, or the way he keeps rubbing his hand up and down her back.

“I thought,” she tries, and chokes on a sob. “I thought they—”

“I know,” he says, hugging her a little closer. “I know, baby. I got you.” He kisses the side of her head. “Can you walk?”

She shakes her head against his shoulder. Her feet are in terrible pain; even if she weren’t so weak, she doesn’t think she’d be able to stand.

“Okay,” he says. “Hold on.”

He shifts his hold on her, then stands, cradling her against his chest. She closes her eyes tightly; she has no desire to see what’s left of her captors. She’s certain to have nightmares of the torture she’s experienced here, and she’d rather not add nightmares of carnage on top of that.

“I’m gonna get you out of here,” Grant promises, and Jemma makes no protest.

She was counting on SHIELD to rescue her, but they never came. It’s difficult to care about allegiances, about the very  _past_  nature of her relationship with Grant, when he’s the one saving her from a very unpleasant fate.

It will be weeks, at least, before she’s in any shape to run from him. Perhaps by then she’ll have gathered up the will to do so.

But she’s not counting on it.

 

 

_ilosttrackofthings asked: biospec + things you said when we were on top of the world_

“Yes!” Jemma exclaims. She presses it into his temple, his cheek, his throat. “Yes, yes, yes!”

Grant laughs, catching her face with both hands to keep her still for a proper kiss. It steals her breath away—though none of her excitement—and curls her toes, and by the time it ends she’s giving serious thought to climbing on top of him and  _showing_  her appreciation.

A sideways look from a passing nurse puts paid to those plans, however, and she’s forced to restrain herself to merely wrapping her arms around his neck.

“This isn’t really how I intended on asking,” Grant murmurs, even as he hugs her close. “I had a plan.”

“Of course you did,” she says fondly. Grant has a plan for  _everything_. “But this is perfect.”

“Really?” he asks, settling against the raised back of his bed once more. “Me in a hospital bed in a not even private room, you half-dressed, surrounded by forty-nine other wounded specialists—that makes a perfect proposal?”

For a moment, she’s thrown—she had actually forgotten that she wasn’t fully dressed; the moment she heard that Grant had been brought in unconscious, she rushed to the makeshift trauma center in the Hub’s back-up hangar without thinking to grab the shirt meant to go over this very thin camisole—but his tone, affection paired with self-deprecation, keeps her from dwelling very long.

“You’re alive when so many aren’t,” she says, taking both his hands in hers. “And I love you. That makes it perfect.”

He smiles—a proper smile, one of the wide ones she sees so rarely, not the tiny quirk to his lips she’s accustomed to—and uses her hold on his hands to tug her in close for another kiss.

“ _You’re_  perfect,” he says, and kisses her yet again.

There’s a wolf-whistle from the bedridden specialist across the aisle. The room is loud, sweltering hot, and overcrowded. Countless civilians are dead, and a good number of SHIELD agents with them. Grant’s injuries are severe enough that she expects it will be at least a week before he’s released from medical care, and the restriction is sure to make him intolerable.

But…still. It’s perfect.

 

 

_Anonymous asked: Sonja/Luis: things you said at 1 am (Luis Ortilla and his not-girlfriend Sonja are both OCs)_

“You don’t have to go.”

Luis’ fingers freeze on the button of his jeans, and he darts a glance at Sonja. The candlelight makes her half-lidded eyes glitter as she watches him, curled on the side of the bed he just left.

“Thought you were asleep,” he says, trying for a smile. “Didn’t I wear you out right?”

“You did.” Her smile is much, much better than his, and almost adorably sleepy. “But I was kinda hoping I wore you out, too.”

“Never,” he says. He finishes buttoning his jeans, scoops his shirt up off the floor, and pulls it on before returning to the bed with his boots. “You’re a rush, babe—exactly the energy boost I need to make it through the day.”

She pushes herself up as he sits, and he can’t resist leaning in to kiss her frown away. Her hair is soft around his fingers as he cradles the back of her head.

He’s a specialist. He notices that kinda shit, that’s all.

“But the day’s over,” she whispers, once he pulls back. “So you can stay, if you wanna.”

“Wouldn’t mind it,” he admits, because there’s nothing wrong with it, is there? Give a woman a few screaming orgasms, there’s no harm in sleeping in her bed afterward. “But my day’s just starting.”

A little of her smile fades. She doesn’t know what he does—who he works for—but she’s not blind. There’s a gun on her nightstand that came from his jeans, and she’s gotta know that’s not it.

Sonja’s a pacifist and a vegan and into all that New Age shit, candles and scarves and do-no-harm or whatever. She might like his calluses, squirm under his rough hands and beg for more, but if she knew how he got them, she’d run screaming.

It wouldn’t be the first time—just the first time he was bothered by it.

“Go to sleep, babe,” he says, and turns away to shove his feet into his boots. His socks are around here somewhere, but he can’t be fucked to find them. “I gotta get to work.”


	9. (chasing those lies) at the kitchen table

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> safelycapricious asked: things you said at the kitchen table, Biospecialist
> 
> This is part of the [chasing those lies verse](http://shineyma.tumblr.com/tagged/verse%3A-chasing-those-lies/chrono); you might wanna read the rest of it first.
> 
> Additionally, this chapter is rated **M** for sexual content.

Grant spends all of dinner struggling with self-control, but Simmons doesn’t seem to notice. She also doesn’t seem to have any intention of following up on all of the teasing she’s been doing; long after dinner is over, she stays on her side of the table, making pointless conversation.

“I have an exam tomorrow,” she says, sounding honestly delighted by the prospect. “So I spent most of the day studying.”

“Yeah?” he asks. Impatience makes his voice rough, but she doesn’t bat an eyelash. “Wouldn’t have thought you’d need to.”

“Oh, I do,” she says, tucking her hair behind her ear in a way that only shows off her delicate wrist and the marks on her neck. Grant bites the inside of his cheek. “These courses are very challenging, you know, especially since—”

She cuts herself off before she can say anything incriminating, but he can fill in the blanks pretty easily. SHIELD’s dropped her into the middle of med school with no preparation but the hands-on training she’s gotten patching him up in the last few months. That leaves a lot of ground to make up; if she weren’t a literal genius, she’d have probably worked herself into exhaustion by now.

“Anyway,” she says awkwardly. She stands, gathering their plates and carrying them over to the sink. “Enough about me! How was your day?”

“Getting sick of group therapy,” he says, leaning back in his chair. “But my hand’s a lot better.”

“Yes.” She sounds unhappy; he took the splint off two days ago, and he knows the rapid improvement bothers her. “I noticed.”

Hell, it bothers him, too—it means he’s been exposed to whatever the hell they’re here to find, and he’s already had enough of being exposed to potentially alien influences to last a lifetime.

But he’s not thinking about the op, right now. Simmons is loading their now-rinsed dishes into the dishwasher, and the way she’s bending over—paired with the fact that all she’s wearing is a thin tank top and panties—is giving him a really great view. The still-darkening bruises he left on the backs of her thighs this morning are on perfect display, and they’re pretty much the last straw.

She’s been teasing him all evening, since the moment he came home from another fruitless group therapy session to find her barely dressed, and finally, his control snaps.

He pushes away from the table and crosses the kitchen on silent feet to stand behind her. She doesn’t notice, not until she shuts the dishwasher and straightens, at which point he closes the last little bit of distance between them to press himself up against her back.

If being crowded against the counter bothers her, she does a poor job of showing it; she tips her head back against his good shoulder to look up at him, giving him a great view down her top, and smiles smugly.

“Is there something I can help you with, darling?” she asks pertly.

“Yeah,” he says. “There is.” He slides his hand along her waist to rest low on her abdomen, smiles at the way her muscles contract in response. “You’ve been making promises all day. You ready to see ‘em through?”

She tries to turn to face him, but he keeps her in place with no trouble at all. His smile widens at the uptick in her breathing; he’s had a lot of fun with this, with the way his ability to move her or keep her still as he pleases turns her on. He’s sick to death of fucking group therapy, but he’s still gonna be sorry when this assignment’s over.

She hums thoughtfully, eyes drifting away from his. “I don’t know. Do you  _deserve_  it?”

“Yes,” he says. “Absolutely.”

“Convince me,” she suggests, resting a little more of her weight against him. “I need to be well-rested for my exam tomorrow; you’ll need a strong argument to persuade me to stay up  _fulfilling promises_ instead.”

“Oh, I think I can manage that,” he says, and slides his hand into her panties.

If he weren’t already hard, feeling how  _wet_  she is would do the job. This isn’t just from the last few minutes, no way. He’s good, but  _no one_  is  _this_  good. The only explanation is that it’s been turning her on, spending all evening winding him up, and thinking about it—about her sitting across the table making idle conversation like this—has him muffling a curse in her hair.

She makes plenty of noise of her own, though. Breathy little gasps that turn into whimpers as he slips his fingers in and out of her, as he plucks at her nipples with his other hand, as he bites at her neck. They’ve been fucking for weeks, and he’s learned his way around her body—learned exactly the way to curl his fingers, exactly how fast and how rough he can get away with being—so it doesn’t take him long at all to have her on the edge.

When he gets her there—when he feels her orgasm approaching in the way her muscles flutter around his fingers—he brings his other hand up to cover her mouth. She’s been surprisingly good with the undercover stuff on this assignment, remembering to keep it simple and to stay in character even in their apartment, but she’s not good enough not to lose it during sex, and they can’t afford to have the neighbors hear her shouting  _Ward_.

But even though it’s motivated by practicality, the move has its advantages. Namely, the way it only increases her squirming against him—because it turns out that he can hit a lot of Simmons’ kinks without even trying, and this is definitely one of them. It kind of makes up for the fact that he’s never been able to make her beg, what with needing to keep her quiet and all.

She still manages to make herself heard, though; as he draws it out, teasing her a little and keeping her on the edge, her nails sink into his wrist, and he laughs into her neck.

If there weren’t his cover—his  _real_  cover—to think of, he’d probably tease her some more: taunt her about whether she’s earned it, tell her everything he’s planning to do to her, draw her out until she can’t even think for desperation. But there’s only so much he can pass off as ‘staying in character,’ so, with regret, he twists his fingers just right even as he grinds the heel of his hand against her clit.

She comes with a muffled shout, and he eases her through it, keeps up a slow, gentle rhythm until her shivering becomes uncomfortable squirming. Then he slips his hand back up to her abdomen to hold her against him. Her knees always get weak after a good orgasm; she needs the support.

“So?” he asks, keeping his voice casual, like he’s not straining painfully against his jeans, “Are you convinced?”

If she says no, he’s gonna kill someone. Probably that jackass across the hall that keeps  _looking_  at her, eyes always lingering like she’s some co-ed and not Grant’s goddamn  _wife_.

Tyler’s. Whatever.

He lets his hand fall away from her mouth so she can answer, but it’s still a long few seconds before she does.

“Yes,” she says hoarsely. “You’re a very persuasive man.”

“Part of my charm,” he says, and kisses her temple. “Don’t worry, baby. I’ll make it worth your while.”


	10. when you thought you were alone

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thestarfishdancer asked: "Oh yay! Requested prompt things! And I'm making my own because that's more fun for me! "Things you said when you thought you were alone in the room.""

Ward doesn’t wake quietly. In point of fact, he’s swearing—or at least she’s nearly positive he’s swearing; she doesn’t know the language, but the tone is unmistakable—before he even opens his eyes.

Watching him from her position on the floor, back against the wall, Jemma wonders idly at the easy show of pain. He always used to disguise it—was pointless stoicism only part of his cover? Or perhaps his pain tolerance has been decreased by his time down in this basement; he’s been out of the field for months, it’s possible that he’s out of practice.

Or perhaps he’s merely in a bad mood.

He sits up slowly, swinging his legs over the bed and rubbing the back of his neck as he aims at glare at the camera in the corner. Considering just how long he was unconscious, it’s likely he was shot with at least four ICER rounds; she imagines he has a terrible headache.

“Now what did I do to deserve  _that_?” he demands. He rolls his shoulders, adding under his breath, “See if I ever give them intel again. Assholes.”

“It wasn’t the intel,” Jemma says, and has the pleasure of seeing him do a literal double take.

He’s on his feet at once, but he makes no move to approach her. Instead, he simply stares, clearly gobsmacked by her presence in his cell.

His reaction is understandable, and also serves to cheer her a little. Everything has been  _ruined_ , but at least she’s managed to take Ward by surprise.

“Simmons,” he says after a moment. “What—”

“Hail HYDRA,” she says, with a sorry excuse for a salute.

“You—” He pauses, eyes drifting away from hers, and she can practically  _see_  him readjusting his perspective, looking back through all of their conversations and encounters with new eyes. “Well, fuck.”

“Quite,” she agrees.

“So I’m guessing you got made,” he says, crossing the cell in a few quick strides to stand over her.

She tips her head back to look up at him, but doesn’t bother to stand. “Obviously.”

“And Coulson put you in  _here_?” he asks, clearly unimpressed. “What, they don’t have any other cells?”

“There are several, actually,” she says. “However, the team seem to be under the impression that we’re collaborators. I believe they’re hoping to gain intelligence by imprisoning us together.”

“Morons,” he says.

“To be fair, it is something of a stretch,” she says. “Two HYDRA agents assigned to the same small team without being made aware of each other’s allegiance?  _I_  wouldn’t have believed it.”

Ward tips his head, allowing the point, and then reaches down to grab her arm and yank her to her feet. Her heart leaps to her throat at the rough treatment; it’s true enough that they’re on the same side, but that doesn’t mean she’s nothing to fear from him.

They’ve never been allies, not really, and it’s not as though she has anything to offer him here. If she’d managed to find a way to release him before the team discovered her true affiliation, she would undoubtedly have managed to secure his gratitude, if not his friendship, but there’s nothing she can do from  _inside_ the cell.

Fortunately, however, he makes no move to harm her. He simply…touches her.

His hands wander up and down her arms, across her shoulders, and back down her arms. It’s slightly off-putting, but as he slides a hand into her hair and—of all things—tugs her in close for a hug, it occurs to her that he might be feeling a bit touch-starved. He has, after all, spent eight months locked in this cell alone, with no physical contact.

He also might be playing with her, but something about the pace of his breathing—how  _deliberately_ even it is—makes her think the former is more likely than the latter.

So, moved to a sort of pity, she returns the embrace without protest. She’s never hugged Ward before, not really—not unless a desperate grab 30,000 feet above the ocean counts—and she’s surprised to find it a highly pleasant experience.

He’s very  _solid_. It makes her feel oddly safe.

His fingers shift a bit in her hair, and, tipping her head back to meet his eyes, she finds him giving her a look that makes her feel very  _unsafe_ —but only in the most thrilling of ways. Heat coils low in her abdomen.

The Ward she knew on the Bus was pretty, but unappealing.  _This_  Ward was devastatingly sexy through the security cameras and is even more compelling in person.

Suddenly, she’s not afraid at all. She sincerely hopes this is going where she thinks it is.

“They wanna see us collaborate,” he says. “Right?”

“Yes,” she confirms. Her breath catches as he releases the arm he’s had wrapped around her waist in favor of trailing his fingers up her spine— _under_  her shirt.

“In that case,” he says, voice low and rough, “what do you say we give ‘em a show?”

Jemma beams at him. “That is an  _excellent_  idea.”

She only sees a flash of his answering grin before he’s kissing her, fierce and demanding.

Her captivity, it seems, is off to a very promising start.


	11. when you thought i was asleep

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Anonymous asked: 12: "'things you said when you thought I was asleep' biospecialist please!"

Grant’s careful not to move a muscle when he regains consciousness. He keeps his breathing deep and even, keeps his heartbeat steady, keeps his eyes closed—feigning sleep is something he’s done a million times in the course of his career, but it’s never been so hard.

Everything filling his senses is horribly familiar: the feel of the bed beneath him, the smell in the air, the low hum of a nearby barrier.

He doesn’t need to open his eyes to know he’s back in the goddamn Vault.

It makes him want to scream—and, more importantly, kill someone. A lot of someones. All of SHIELD, basically, not that that’s a new impulse.

Two fucking years. After two fucking years, all of the battles he’s fought, the sacrifices he’s made—after he clawed his way to the top of HYDRA and made it his own—how the fuck did he end up back where he started?

He’s sure Coulson’s outside the cell, just waiting to gloat, and it’s tempting to ‘wake up’ and let him. That’s definitely the  _fastest_  way to get answers, but it’s not the smartest. There’s no way Grant can keep his calm right now, and the last thing he wants is to give Coulson the satisfaction of seeing him lose his temper.

So he keeps still, breathes in and breathes out slowly, struggling with his fury (and the pounding in his temples; it’s obvious it was an ICER shot that got him here). He can turn this around, somehow. Hell, he probably won’t have to; he’s got back-up plans upon back-up plans, and he’s got a good, loyal team that’s more than capable of taking out Coulson’s crew. Markham’ll tear the place apart brick by brick, if he has to.

All Grant has to do is wait.

“I’m sorry.”

 _That’s_  not the voice he was expecting, and Grant barely stops himself from reacting.

What the fuck is Jemma doing here? And apologizing? What—

Oh, she’s gotta be fucking kidding him.

“I’m sorry,” she repeats. She sounds miserable; her voice is thick, the way it gets when she’s been crying, and if the little, shaky breaths she’s taking are any indication, she still is. “I’m so sorry, Grant. This isn’t—I didn’t mean for this to happen.”

She’s damn well  _gonna_  be sorry, if he’s back in here because of her. He itches with the urge to confront her—to demand answers—but chances are the only reason she’s even been allowed down here is because they think he’s unconscious. The moment he wakes up, they’ll whisk her away.

So he continues to feign sleep.

“I couldn’t let you kill them,” Jemma says. “I  _know_  they’re the enemy, but I just—I couldn’t.” He can hear her shifting, probably drawing her knees up; she always ends up curling into a little ball when she’s crying, like she’s trying to take up less room. “But I thought they’d  _avoid_  the trap! I didn’t think they’d turn it around on you.”

Well. That clears a few things up.

The trap he set for SHIELD should’ve wiped them out, but if Jemma tipped them off and they managed to turn it into an ambush…

It explains how he ended up back in this fucking cell.

“I’m  _sorry_ ,” she says again.

It does leave the question of how Jemma managed to tip SHIELD off, though. He’s gonna be having a _word_  with her guards when he gets out of here.

And he  _is_  gonna get out of here. His people know where the Playground is and they’ll know SHIELD has him. He just needs to be patient, that’s all.

“Okay, Simmons.” That’s Coulson. “You’ve had your say. Time’s up.”

“Can you tell him—” Jemma swallows audibly. “When he’s awake, will you tell him that I’m sorry?”

“You sure you want me to do that?” Coulson asks. “He doesn’t need to know you were involved in this.”

“He’ll know,” she says, voice subdued. “He always knows. And I want him to know that I’m sorry.”

“Okay,” Coulson says. “I’ll tell him.” He sounds old and sad, and his tone when he speaks again is weirdly gentle. It makes Grant wonder exactly what kind of impression the team has about his and Jemma’s relationship. “Go with Skye now, okay? She’ll take you to Fitz.”

Fucking Fitz. After all the trouble Grant’s gone to to keep him away from Jemma.

“All right,” Jemma says.

She was a frequent visitor during his first stay in this cell, so he recognizes the sound of her footsteps on the stairs. Hearing them now only adds to his anger, but he pushes it down, reminding himself again that all he needs is to be patient.

He’ll be out of here soon enough. He can take down SHIELD from within, from the very heart of their base—personally cross off each and every one of his old team and their new additions, ensure that they really, truly suffer.

And then?

Then he can turn his attention to punishing Jemma for her betrayal.


	12. don't worry me (you know i'll be there)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For the **Magic** theme at Ward x Simmons Summer.
> 
> Takes place in the same verse as [a spell that can't be broken](http://archiveofourown.org/works/3595836/chapters/9464880); you may wanna read that first.

Grant knows as soon as he lays eyes on Jemma that things are bad.

The lines of magic swirling along her arms, written in her skin like tattoos, would be pretty if they weren’t such a dim, awful gray. She’s always preferred to keep her less positive emotions to herself, so he doesn’t see her magic that color very often; that she’s not only manifesting it, but manifesting it on her own skin, means that it must not be looking very good.

“Jemma,” he says.

She whirls away from the glass to face him, and then throws herself into his arms with a wordless cry.

“Hey, hey,” he coos, hugging her close. “You’re okay, baby. I got you.” He cradles her head against his shoulder and looks to Bobbi, who’s still standing at the window. “Bobbi?”

All he gets in return is an uncomfortable grimace, and he frowns as he presses a kiss to the top of Jemma’s head. Her panic and fear and despair and worry are buzzing under his skin, an uncomfortable jumble of emotions he’s never felt from her in this combination before.

He doesn’t like it.

He also doesn’t like the way her shoulders are shaking with quiet sobs, or the tears he can feel dampening his shirt. He especially doesn’t like the quick, shuddering breaths she keeps taking. She’s working herself up to a panic attack; he can feel it building in his lungs already, and it won’t help either of them.

“Baby,” he says, rubbing a soothing hand up her back. “Can I make you feel better?”

She leans back to meet his eyes, and the sight of her miserable, tear-stained face hits him right in the gut.

Someone is definitely gonna die for this.

“I don’t know,” she says, chewing on her lower lip. “Fitz…”

“I know it’s hard,” he says, as her voice seems to fail her, “but you being this upset won’t help him.”

“I can’t help him at all,” she snaps, though she still sounds more miserable than angry. “His injuries are—are years beyond any of my training. I wouldn’t even know where to  _start_.”

Her voice cracks on the last word, and he cups her face in his hands.

Jemma has a natural gift for healing magic, an inborn talent that she only recently began exploring. Her magic heals her own body naturally, any bruises or scrapes disappearing in hours, and it’s only since they began dating—or rather, since Grant missed their six-month anniversary because he was laid up in the infirmary under sedation as two healers rebuilt his left knee—that she’s started getting training in consciously wielding healing magic on others.

She can heal the cuts and abrasions he deems too minor to bother with going to the healers for, but that’s about the limit of her training so far, so she’s almost definitely right. Whatever Fitz’s injuries are, he’s been in with the healers for nearly three hours now—which means he’s way beyond Jemma’s basic, sporadic lessons.

So, no, she can’t help Fitz. Not magically, at least. But Grant can help  _her_ , and he’s not about to stand back and watch her fall apart when he can prevent it.

“Let me help you,” he entreats. “Please.”

After a second’s hesitation, she nods, and he breathes a sigh of relief.

“Thank you,” he says, and kisses her forehead.

He uses the contact as a focus as he gathers up his calm and his patience and his confidence in the skill of SHIELD’s healers, and then he weaves them together. That done, he steps back and lets his hands fall from Jemma’s face to her arms.

He doesn’t need this kind of pointed touch to influence someone’s emotions, but the way he usually does it—a brief brush of fingers, a friendly pat on the arm, an accidental bump—isn’t meant for Jemma. He won’t treat her like a mark. It doesn’t matter that she wouldn’t even notice (or care) at this point;  _he_ would know.

So he grips her gently by the forearms and gives her a jolt of calmpatienceconfidence, with just a little undertone of his love for her to anchor it. The lines on her arms shift under his hands, swirls loosening as they lighten to a paler, barely visible gray. Still not great, but probably as good as he’s gonna get right now.

She sways into him, exhaustion taking root now that her panic has been pushed aside, and he kisses her hair as he wraps her in a hug.

“You wanna come sit down?” he asks.

She shakes her head against his shoulder. “I want to stay here.”

Here in his arms or here by the windows, he’s not sure. Either way, he leaves it be. Getting her out of observation and into the waiting area was always a long shot, and short of actually, physically picking her up and relocating her, he doesn’t much like his chances of persuading her.

And he’s pretty sure manhandling her will only undo the work his magic just did, so he’ll save that as a last resort.

“Okay,” he says. “That’s fine.” He kisses her hair again, feels her worry—subdued, but definitely still present—for Fitz twine itself around his heart. “We’ll stay here.”

She lets out a shuddering breath, hands fisting in his shirt, and he looks up to catch Bobbi’s gaze.

“You got eyes on the enemy?” he asks in Spanish.

 _Enemy_  is a strong word— _walking dead man_  would be a better moniker for Hall—but, while Jemma doesn’t speak Spanish, she’s still totally capable of picking the name of the man who attacked her and Fitz out of a sentence full of unfamiliar words.

And the last thing he wants to do is remind her of the events that led to Fitz’s current state.

“Trip’s on it,” Bobbi says, also in Spanish. “He’s nearly got him cornered; we’ll have him by the end of the day.”

“Good,” Grant says, and hugs Jemma a little closer as her breath hitches. She’s not sobbing anymore, but she’s definitely still crying. “I want him alive, Bobbi.”

The smile Bobbi gives him has a twist of vicious satisfaction that’s sent grown men running on more than one occasion. Even from here, with a good six feet of space between them, he can feel the fury burning through her blood.

She’s not as angry as he is, but she’s damn close.

“Count on it,” she says.

Left  _unsaid_  is the fact that Hall will be extremely dead by the time Grant’s done with him—not that that’ll be anytime soon. Jemma’s in one piece  _now_ , but there’s blood on her clothes and a lingering kind of spark to her magic that tells him she’s both done and received some personal healing lately.

He would’ve killed Hall anyway for Jemma’s panic and misery over Fitz. But for whatever harm’s been done to her—harm severe enough that she needed help from the healers, that she couldn’t take care of it herself?

He’s gonna make it very, very slow.


	13. "who did this to you?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Anonymous asked: "Skimmons friendship "who did this to you?" please!"

There’s a bruise on Jemma’s cheek, dark and ugly.

Skye can’t stop looking at it.

She knows from experience the kind of hit that causes a bruise like that—knows what kind of force has to be behind it and how much it  _hurts_ , how your whole face feels hot, how you’d swear even your bones are throbbing—how the pain  _lingers_ , diminishing but not disappearing, not until the bruise starts to fade.

But Skye’s a fighter. Not a specialist, really, even though she’s been trained by one (or two, but she tries not to think about that)—but a fighter. She goes on combat ops and she’s shot people and she’s bloodied her knuckles on people’s faces. She’s a  _fighter_.

Jemma’s a scientist. She’s not supposed to get bruises at all—and definitely not ones like that.

She’s pale underneath it, pale but composed. Her hands are folded neatly on the table, eyes fixed on the far wall.

She’s not talking.

But that’s fair, because neither is Skye.

She’s supposed to be asking questions, but she can’t. She can’t drag her eyes away from that bruise long enough to ask. It’s really dark—third-day dark—and Skye can’t stop wondering where it came from, who gave it to her. Who was it that looked sweet, kind,  _amazing_  Jemma Simmons in the face and then hit her  _that_  hard?

But that’s a stupid question. It was Ward. Of  _course_  it was Ward.

It  _has_  to have been Ward.

Jemma said, earlier, that it wasn’t, but she was lying. Obviously. Skye’s seen it before; a battered girlfriend protecting her abuser, deny his culpability. And then, when confronted with  _evidence_  of how he’s a  _total scumbag_ , defending him. That it was her fault, not his. If only she were smarter, prettier, if only she wouldn’t make him so angry—

That’s what’s happening here. Of course that’s what’s happening.

Jemma said—she  _keeps_  saying, hasn’t stopped saying since they found her three days ago—that Ward loves her. But she’s wrong. She’s been abused ( _obviously_  she’s been abused) and she’s hiding from it, twisting her super genius brain into knots (like the knots in Skye’s stomach) to deny the truth.

Of course Jemma’s been abused.

Ward isn’t capable of love. He’s  _not_. He’s a  _monster_ , the twisted psychopath that haunts the nightmares of every living SHIELD agent (and probably a few of the dead ones, too). He’s killed and tortured without remorse, slaughtered people by the dozens, ended and ruined so many lives…

He’s  _evil_.

He’s evil, and Jemma is good. She’s  _so_  good.

So of course he’s abused her. It’s the only explanation.

The only way anyone as good—as loving, as brilliant, as forgiving and as  _determined_  to better people’s lives—as Jemma could ever be convinced to love someone as twisted as Ward is if he  _broke_  her first.

He must’ve broken her.

It’s the only thing—the  _only thing_ —that makes sense.

Isn’t it?


	14. (we are not) what you think we are

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For the **AU** theme at Ward x Simmons Summer. I went with a Eureka fusion.

“Just  _stop_  it!”

With that, Fitz turns on his heel and storms out. Grant’s well aware that he’s ruining the dramatic exit by not following, but he really doesn’t care. Fitz’s image (and he’s still trying to get his head around that, that  _Fitz_  has an  _image_ ) is so much less important than lingering in Jemma’s lab.

There was a time—a  _timeline_ —when and where he wasn’t this pathetic. When he could see her (in all senses of the word) whenever he wanted—when he could drop by with lunch or tug her away from her work at the end of the day or wake up in the middle of the night and have her  _right there_.

But that timeline’s gone, erased from the universe by Daniel fucking Whitehall’s lust for the future, and in this timeline, Jemma only knows him as the uptight, socially stunted  _moron_  that keeps arresting her when her experiments wander away from the conventionally accepted bounds of ethics.

(And exactly what the hell happened to his double to make him care about things as pointless as ethics and laws, anyway?)

This timeline has to be preserved, apparently, and so Grant’s time with Jemma has been severely limited lately. He can’t resist the urge to draw this visit out, even if she’s—

Even if she’s staring after Fitz with that  _solving a puzzle_  expression that drew him to her in the first place.

“Something’s wrong,” she says slowly.

“Wrong?” he asks, earning a startled look. If he’s any judge, she didn’t notice he was still here.

He’s not gonna lie, that stings.

“Yes,” she says.

She tips her head, eyebrows scrunching together in the same confused way they used to when he first started wooing her—when he brought her dinner when she was working overtime or complimented her smile or offered to take her hiking when she needed some plant or another from the forest. His heart twists with something like longing; that feels like lifetimes ago.

In their old timeline, he was allowed to kiss her when she wore that look—could smooth away the wrinkles in her forehead and chase the frown from her lips by covering them with his own.

But in this one, he’s just the Head of Security to her, nothing more. And if there’s something wrong, it’s his job to fix it.

“What’s wrong?” he asks.

She studies him for a minute, then looks back to the door. “He’s not in love with me anymore.”

Something in Grant goes cold.

“What do you mean?” he asks, keeping his voice even through sheer force of will.

He was beyond thrown when he realized he and Jemma didn’t get along in this timeline. It was pretty obvious they weren’t together, what with her calling him a Neanderthal and a moron in their first five minutes of conversation, and he got stuck on that pretty thoroughly. It’s been weeks, and he’s  _still_ stuck on that.

He never stopped to wonder if, in absence of a relationship with him, she ended up with someone else.

And he’s willing to bet none of the others wondered either. If she’s supposed to be in a relationship with Fitz, and Fitz has continued treating her like his sister, the way he always has…

That something cold spreads through him, chilling the rage that wants to build in his chest. He’s played along with this preserve-the-timeline shit this far, but he has his limits, and he’ll kill the whole fucking DOD before he lets anyone else—even Fitz—touch Jemma.

“Fitz has been in love with me since we were at university together,” Jemma explains, unaware (of course she’s unaware; this Jemma doesn’t know a damn thing about him) of the urge for violence itching at his fingertips. “He’s never got the nerve up to do anything about it, bless him, but the love’s never faded.” Her frown deepens. “Until very recently, when it disappeared overnight.”

Grant’s so busy being relieved that this timeline’s Fitz’s love was the  _from afar_  type that it takes him a second to realize Jemma’s turned her thoughtful gaze on him.

“You’ve changed, too,” she muses.

He stills. “No, I haven’t.”

“Yes, you have,” she says, eyes narrowed, and he wants to kiss her so much that for a second, he can’t even breathe. It’s been fucking  _weeks_  since he really touched her. He doesn’t know how much longer he can stand it. “You’re much more interesting than you used to be.”

He smiles reflexively—because  _interesting_  is a pretty major compliment, coming from Jemma—and only realizes his mistake when her eyes narrow further.

Right. His double is a humorless stick in the mud. He keeps forgetting.

“Maybe you’re just less trouble,” he suggests, trying for the flat tone he’s practiced with May. She still gives him weird looks (or, well, as close as May ever gets to weird looks) every time he cracks a joke, and they’ve spent hours going over the expressions and mannerisms she’s used to from his double.

He could do better, probably. But he doesn’t  _want_  to. He doesn’t like this timeline’s Grant Ward, boring and predicable and completely incapable of taking a joke. Somewhere along the lines their paths diverged, and in this timeline he’s got no Jemma, no John—not even Buddy. He barely even has a _personality_.

He wants his damn life back.

“I’m exactly as much trouble as I’ve ever been,” she says, studying him closely. “Which is to say, none at all.  _You’ve_  simply become more understanding of my perfectly natural sense of scientific curiosity. Ever since Founder’s Day…”

As she trails off, there’s a tug in his gut that says they’re approaching dangerous territory. He should divert her—change the subject or say something typical of the other Grant, maybe mention the hastily hidden prototype she was working on when he and Fitz walked in.

But she’s looking at him, really looking  _at_  him instead of through him, the way she’s been doing for weeks. It’s one of the things that grate the most; hate he could deal with, but indifference?

It’s killing him.

“Ever since Founder’s Day,” she repeats, “it’s as though you and Fitz are entirely different people.”

He shuts down his reaction, but Jemma doesn’t seem to need one. She’s wearing the expression that means things are falling into place for her, puzzle pieces slotting together just right.

God, he misses her.

“And Coulson,” she says, more to herself than to him. “And—”

He needs to stop her before she unravels the entire conspiracy. But she called him interesting and she’s  _looking_  at him and he’s not about to ruin that by doing something typical of the boring Grant Ward she probably decided was beneath her notice before her second day in Eureka.

There are probably plenty of options, but he’s been denying himself what he wants for  _weeks_  and he’s never been very good at that.

So he kisses her.

She’s still for a long second, shocked into non-reaction, and then all at once she melts into him, hands twisting in his shirt and mouth opening under his to deepen the kiss into something hungry—something  _real_.

Well, then.

He can  _definitely_  work with this.


	15. tune as old as song

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For the **Dance** theme at Ward x Simmons Summer.

Jemma wakes to soft music.

It’s early, only the barest hint of light shining through the curtains, but she’s alone. She stretches sleepily, reaching out across the empty space beside her, and finds the sheets cold.

So Grant’s been gone a while, then.

It’s odd—usually he prefers to sleep in on his rare days off, to linger beside her as long as possible—but she’s not quite awake enough to reason through it. She climbs out of bed and stumbles to the bathroom, thinking perhaps he might have been called in. She’ll check her phone before she goes back to sleep.

Not until she’s halfway through washing her hands does she realize the glaring error in that assumption—namely, the music still drifting through the door. It’s quiet, familiar in an impossible to place way, and it wouldn’t exactly be playing on its own, now would it?

So he must still be home.

Curious as to what might have drawn him out of bed (let alone prompted him to play music) at this early hour, she leaves the bedroom, snagging his shirt off the top of the laundry basket as she goes. Winter is just beginning; it’s not quite cold enough to justify a robe, but it’s chilly enough that her camisole top and pajama bottoms aren’t sufficient, and she wraps Grant’s shirt around herself with a shiver as she heads down the hall.

The music is coming from the living room, and as it grows louder as she draws nearer, she finds herself humming along. She  _knows_  this song, even though she can’t place it. It’s pretty—and instrumental, though she has the feeling there are meant to be lyrics. She’s certain she’d know it if she heard them.

The song fades into a new one as she turns the corner, and this one she recognizes at once. It’s from _Beauty and the Beast_ , and at that realization, it clicks that the previous song was from  _Sleeping Beauty_.

But why on earth would Grant be playing instrumental Disney music at—

Oh.

Jemma stops in the living room doorway, arrested by the sight in front of her. Grant’s eyes flick up to meet hers—situational awareness, he calls it; she’s never once been able to sneak up on him—and he gives her a little smile, but most of his attention remains fixed on Maggie.

Her sweet face is screwed up in concentration, hands tightly clasped with Grant’s as he dances her around the living room. She’s standing on his feet, but appears—by the focus with which she’s studying them—to be attempting to memorize the steps, rather than just enjoying it.

Heart melting in her chest, Jemma covers her mouth, fighting against a wave of tears.

She never imagined this, when she first started sleeping with Grant. She wasn’t planning on ever introducing him to Maggie at all, let alone allowing him to become an important part of her life. And even if Jemma  _had_  planned on it, had intended to let their casual sex develop into a relationship, she never would have hoped for him to find this level of comfort with her daughter.

Part of her wants to fetch her cell phone, to grab a camera and document this moment, but she can’t tear herself away.

The  _Beauty and the Beast_  instrumental is drawing to a close, and Grant gives Maggie a little spin as he stops, prompting an adorable giggle.

“Again?” she asks, with the wide, pleading eyes Jemma still struggles to say  _no_  to.

“Maybe later,” Grant says. “I think right now is breakfast time, don’t you?”

“Aww,” she pouts. “Okay.”

He bows, managing—somehow—not to look at all ridiculous. “And thank you for the dance, princess.”

Any other man would sound at least a little absurd, and perhaps even mocking, saying something like that. Grant, however, maintains a perfect combination of serious and teasing. It’s very impressive.

“You’re welcome,” Maggie says politely, and Jemma has to bite back a giggle of her own—something that becomes even more difficult at her daughter’s adorably wobbly curtsey. Then Maggie wraps her arms around Grant’s waist and squeezes with a happy, “Thank you, Daddy!” and the urge to laugh is successfully quashed.

The words put a lump in her throat, but that’s nothing to Grant, who looks rather as though he’s been struck.

It’s not the first time Maggie’s called him that; she’s not doing so consistently yet, but it’s been happening more and more often, the closer they get to the wedding. Still, Grant seems so  _shaken_  by it every time, and she loves him all the more for it—for the fact that he  _understands_  what an honor it is, what blessing he’s been granted in the form of her daughter’s love.

As such, she decides to give him a moment to recover.

“Good morning,” she says, drawing Maggie’s attention. “Have I overslept?”

Her voice is a bit rough from the emotion she’s fighting, but Maggie doesn’t seem to notice. She all but skips across the room to throw herself at Jemma in an excited hug.

“Hi, Mummy!” she says, as Jemma holds her close. “We’re practicing for the wedding!”

Ah, that explains it. Maggie’s very excited for the wedding—perhaps even moreso than Jemma herself. She’s been enthusiastic about every single detail, from her important position as flower girl to the dress shopping Jemma’s promised for next week to picking out napkin colors.

“I saw,” Jemma says, smoothing Maggie’s sleep-tousled hair. “And such talent!” She raises her eyes to Grant, who appears to have regained his composure. “No one will notice us at all, will they?”

“Nope,” he says contently, approaching to kiss her cheek. “I can hear it already— _bride and groom? What bride and groom?_ ”

He adopts a (terrible) mimicry of her accent for the question, so, over Maggie’s giggles, Jemma adopts one of his. “ _I only saw a flower girl_.”

“Nobody’ll believe we’re married,” Grant sighs. “They’ll all totally miss the wedding.”

“But they  _will_  know what a beautiful and talented daughter we have,” she offers, giving Maggie a little squeeze. “And of course they’ll all want to dance with her at the reception.”

“Too bad,” he says, and—quick as a snake—scoops Maggie up into his arms. “I’m calling dibs.”

“Nooooo,” Maggie laughs. “I wanna dance with Cody!”

“No way,” Grant says, “absolutely not. You can dance with me and maybe— _maybe_ —Uncle Fitz. Sorry, Mags.”

Jemma stays where she is as he turns towards the kitchen, and the playful argument fades out as she watches them go. She’ll follow soon, save Maggie from Grant’s idea of a nutritious breakfast—nothing but sugar; she’ll be bouncing off the walls all weekend—but she needs a moment, first. Her heart is full to bursting with love and gratitude, and she wants to savor it.

Life, in this moment, is perfect.


	16. "can't tie 'em up if they just wiggle around!"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> safelycapricious asked: "Biospecialist: “Can’t tie ‘em up if they just wiggle around!”"

Jemma feels heavy.

It’s the only way to describe it, really. Every part of her—from the head she can’t lift to the eyes she can barely keep open to the limbs she wouldn’t be able to move even if they  _weren’t_  restrained—feels weighed down. Even her mind is lagging, her thoughts sluggish, as though each one is bearing a great burden.

Case in point, it takes far too long to make the appropriate connections—the heaviness of her body to the ropes tying her to this chair to the dryness in her mouth—and understand what’s happened. She’s been drugged and, apparently, abducted.

Fear is accordingly slow to follow, though it does arrive eventually. And it gets something of a kick start when someone fists a hand in her hair and yanks her head up, forcing her to look at what’s in front of her.

Her vision is hazy and her eyes refuse to focus, but she doesn’t need to  _see_  the blur across the room to know who it is. She recognizes his voice.

“What did you do to her?”

It’s Ward, and he sounds very, very angry. That’s hardly new; ever since his exposure to the berserker staff, he’s been angry more often than not. Still, there’s a clear and horrible threat in his tone she’s never heard before.

Despite the—worryingly dull—pain in her scalp, she feels a twinge of pity for whoever is holding her hair. She imagines that this person is about to suffer serious injury at Ward’s hands.

“We simply made her more peaceful,” the man behind her says, stroking her cheek. “We didn’t intend to, but she put up more of a fight than we were expecting.” He adopts a mocking tone to add, “Can’t tie ‘em up if they just wiggle around.”

Now that he mentions it, she does remember something of a struggle. It’s possible some of the heaviness in her face is actually throbbing; she has a dim recollection of being struck—possibly more than once.

Her vision is starting to clear a bit, so she’s able to make out the way Ward’s hands fist at his sides.

“Let her go,” he demands lowly. “This has nothing to do with her.”

“No?” her captor asks. His hand falls from her face to her shoulder, while the other tightens in her hair. “But  _you_  have to do with her, don’t you? She’s a little duckling you’ve sheltered under your wing, isn’t she? She’s under your protection—and anything to do with you is to do with this.”

His fingers dig into her shoulder, and there must be something there—a wound of some kind—because pain scorches through her veins, reaching past the numbness of whatever drug she’s been given to punch the breath right out of her.

She doesn’t scream, exactly—she’s not certain she’s capable of that—but the noise she makes is much louder than a whimper, and Ward jerks as though he physically feels it.

“Don’t,” he snaps, and her captor laughs.

“Don’t what?” he asks. “You had to know this was coming, brother, from the moment you betrayed your family.”

“I’m not your damn brother,” Ward says tightly, “and we were never family. You know that.”

Her captor sighs and loosens his grip, easing the pain in her shoulder. Jemma’s breath shudders out of her in relief.

“I do, yes,” her captor says. “We’ve uncovered the truth of your deception. SHIELD sent you to pose as a true believer, only so you could destroy us from within. I applaud your skill in acting; would that you had pursued it as a career, rather than selling your soul to the aimless violence of—”

“Maybe I sold my soul,” Ward interrupts, “but she didn’t. Simmons is a scientist—a bringer of knowledge. Pretty sure the teachings have some strong things to say about hurting those.”

“You’re right,” her captor says, voice heavy, and her head falls forward as the hand fisted in her hair disappears abruptly…only to return a moment later, this time smoothing over it, rather than gripping. She tries to pull away from it, or even to look up again, but she’s still simply too heavy to move. “We regret the necessity of what we’ve done to your companion. She will receive full compensation, I assure you.”

“The hell she will,” Ward nearly snarls, and unease cuts through the fog in Jemma’s mind. She doesn’t think she wants to see what sort of compensation her captor has in mind. “No, you’re gonna let her go. Right now. And in return, I’ll let you live.”

“Now, brother,” her captor says. “You know I can’t do that. A lesson must be learned; you betrayed the family, and for that, you must be punished. The One teaches that disloyalty is the worst of sins, and you are a traitor twice over.”

“Oh, yeah?” Ward asks. There’s still such fury simmering beneath his words; Jemma wonders if her captor is inhumanly brave or simply exceptionally stupid. “And how’s that?”

“We have seen into the truth of you. You have deceived your other family just as you deceived us—it is not SHIELD you hail, but—”

Jemma still can’t lift her head, so she’s not certain what happens. All she has to go off of is sound: the sudden end to her captor’s sentence, a thump, and an unpleasant sort of  _squish_. Then there are hands on her again, these much more familiar and much more welcome.

“Simmons?” Ward asks, rough hands gentle as they cup her cheeks, tilting her face up so he can meet her eyes. Now that he’s kneeling in front of her, she can see him perfectly clearly—can read the worry that accompanies the anger in his face. “Can you hear me?”

Her tongue is just as heavy as the rest of her, but she manages a somewhat slurred, “yes,” that eases the lines around Ward’s eyes.

“Good,” he says, and releases her face in order to untie the ropes securing her right wrist to the armrest of her chair. “Are you hurt anywhere else?”

“Dunno,” she slurs. “Can’t feel it.”

Ward swears viciously, but his hands remain gentle as he moves to her other wrist.

“It’s okay,” he says. “I’m gonna get you out of here, okay?”

“’Kay.”

Though the effects of the drug appear to be diminishing, in that she’s more capable of thought, they’re far from gone; she can still barely keep her eyes open, and—by the time Ward finishes untying her ankles—can’t be bothered with trying. It’s a relief to close them, though it only seems to double their weight. She doesn’t believe she’ll be opening them again anytime soon.

Agony sears through her again, starting from her shoulder and shooting all the way to her hip, as Ward lifts her from her chair. This time, the pain escapes her in a low moan, and he curses again as he cradles her to his chest.

“You’re gonna be fine,” he says. “Promise.” There’s a brief pressure at the top of her head that she can’t make sense of; both of his hands are clearly full with carrying her, and she doesn’t think there’s anyone else here (aside from her unfortunate captor). “But—hey. Hey. Don’t go to sleep.”

All she’s capable of is a questioning noise; luckily, Ward understands it as the demand that it is.

“I’m sorry,” he says. “I know you’re hurting, but I need some answers before you can pass out.” There’s a pause, followed by a shift in the way he’s holding her, and after a moment the creak of a door opening. “Do you know what happened to the others?”

The others?

He has to mean the rest of the team, and worry stirs in Jemma’s gut. She has no idea.

She must communicate that somehow, because his grip on her tightens nearly to the point of discomfort before abruptly relaxing.

“Okay,” he says. “It’s okay. I’ll come back for them just as soon as I get you out of here.”

“No,” she says—or thinks she says. Perhaps she doesn’t manage it, because Ward—absurdly—laughs.

“Sorry,” he says. “But I’ve only got two arms. I can’t carry more than one hostage at a time. And it’d be pretty dumb to just run off and leave you in the middle of the hall, don’t you think?”

It’s difficult to argue with that sort of logic and, defeated, she doesn’t attempt to. Exhaustion is winning out over everything else. Her head lolls against his shoulder, and she feels that strange pressure again.

“You’re gonna be fine,” he says once more. “I’ll get you and the others out of here, and then I’m gonna kill every single one of these freaks. I promise.”

She means to protest—violence on a small scale, as necessary to rescue their team, is acceptable, but slaughtering  _everyone_  involved is the very definition of overkill—but she can’t quite manage it. His even stride and the warmth of his body, combined with the lingering effects of whatever sedative she was dosed with, are lulling her to sleep.

This is no time for slumber—her team is missing; how can she sleep when she doesn’t know whether they’re safe?—but her body doesn’t care. She’s in no shape to fight off her exhaustion.

“Trust me,” Ward murmurs. “I’ll take care of everything.” She feels the strange pressure once more, and almost—almost—manages to quantify it, but the thought slips away before she can grasp it. “You can sleep now.”

So she does.


	17. Five sentence part six

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You know the drill, right? Right.

_ilosttrackofthings asked: "Don't talk to her like that."_

Two seconds ago, Jemma would have given anything to get Grant’s eyes off of her. Now, as he finally looks away, she’d do anything to have them back.

“Well,” he says, sounding perfectly amused and not at all worried about the gun Hunter is aiming at him. “If it isn’t the cowboy. You any better at shooting people than you are tailing them?”

Jemma has no idea what he’s talking about, but it hardly matters. She’s more concerned with the violence she’s sure is imminent.

“You’ll find out for yourself if you don’t let her go,” Hunter threatens.

Grant smiles. To the uninformed observer, it would appear a very pleasant expression, but Jemma can read the threat in it.

“Don’t you  _dare_ ,” she says, drawing Grant’s attention away from Hunter. “I mean it, Grant.”

He’s clearly pleased by the use of his first name, and even more clearly amused by her words.

“Don’t what?” he asks innocently.

“Don’t  _anything_ ,” she snaps. “Leave Hunter alone.”

The amusement fades from his expression as his grip on her arm tightens slightly.

“Or what?” he asks lowly, but she’s too angry to be intimidated.

“You keep saying you want my forgiveness,” she says. “How do you expect to earn it if you continue to hurt the people I care about?”

“Well.” He glances over her head at Hunter, then gives her a wicked smile. “When you put it that way…”

Before she—or, unfortunately, Hunter—can react, Grant brings up the ICER he took from her earlier and fires three rounds into Hunter’s chest. He, naturally, collapses unconscious to the ground; Jemma tries reflexively to move towards him, but Grant holds her in place.

“There,” he says. “I didn’t kill him, just for you.”

“Thank you,” she says, a touch more snidely than is probably wise.

He merely smirks. “You’re welcome. Now…” He lets go of her, only to sling his arm around her shoulders a moment later and turn her toward the door. “Let’s talk about forgiveness.”

 

 

_ilosttrackofthings asked: She's lost count of how many drinks she's had, but she's a ways past tipsy and nowhere near forgetting what she came here to forget._

It’s time to accept that alcohol isn’t going to do her any good; all she’s doing here is exposing herself to secondhand smoke (there’s an awful lot of it) and the attentions of drunken strangers.

With that in mind—and well aware that, as kind as the bartender has been, he’s not paid to scare customers away from one another—she decides to leave. Of course, it’s easier said than done; she might not be drunk enough to forget, but she  _is_  drunk enough to be unsteady. She stumbles a little upon sliding off her stool, and again on the steps down to the street.

The second time, she’s not able to recenter herself in time, and likely would have fallen if not for the hands that catch her shoulders.

“Whoa,” the man steadying her says. “You okay there, miss?”

“Doctor,” she corrects automatically—her time undercover left its scars, the most prominent of which is a deep-seated hatred of the word  _miss_ —before remembering her manners. “And yes. Thank you.”

“No problem.” His hands fall away from her shoulders as she looks up at him, and the smile on his (admittedly handsome) face makes her frown.

“I know you,” she says. His eyebrows go up. “Don’t I?”

“I don’t think so,” he says, looking to his—very large—companion, who shrugs. 

“No, I do,” she insists, narrowing her eyes in concentration. She’s seen him somewhere before—but where?

“Well, you look pretty drunk there, Doctor,” he says “You think maybe you’re mistaking me for someone else?”

At the sight of his teasing smile, it clicks, and she groans.

“Ugh,” she says. “You’re one of Ward’s, aren’t you?”

Her rescuer’s smile fades as his companion tenses. Said companion slips his hand into his jacket pocket, and Jemma is distantly aware that she should probably be afraid, but all she can actually feel is annoyance.

“Maybe,” her rescuer says carefully. “And if I am?”

“You may tell that  _bastard_ ,” she says, poking her rescuer in the chest for emphasis, “that the next time I see him, I am going to shoot him. In the face. No more messing about with bombs or pathogens, oh no. Just a bullet.” She pauses, savoring the mental image. “Possibly two bullets.”

“Oh yeah?” he asks, catching her hand before she can poke him again. His companion has stepped away, but Jemma doesn’t have time to wonder why. “And what’s the boss done to deserve that?”

“He knows exactly what he’s done,” she says. “That prat.” Thinking about it—about Ward’s numerous crimes and the people who have suffered for them—fills her with a delicious sort of anger, washing away the lingering chill in her bones from—from what she’s not thinking about. “Bloody traitor.”

“Missed you too, Simmons.”

The familiar—annoyingly amused—voice comes from a ways away, and Jemma twists to follow the sound. Ward is strolling up the sidewalk, perfectly at ease, as though he’s merely a harmless pedestrian and not a  _murdering traitor_.

Where did he even  _come_  from? Skye—Daisy—was right. He  _is_  like Candyman.

“Go away,” she tells him. “No one summoned you.”

He smiles. “I think that’s my line, don’t you? Since you’re on my block.”

Jemma frowns, confused, and Ward hooks a thumb over his shoulder, indicating the large warehouse at the end of the street.

“My base,” he says, by way of explanation, as he reaches them.

“Oh.” 

She blinks at the building, considering the odds that, of all the bars in the country, she would choose the one down the street from HYDRA’s base of operations, and reaches the only possible conclusion. It’s a disheartening one.

“I’m still cursed,” she says sadly.

“Cursed?” Ward echoes. “Since when do you believe in curses?”

What a stupid question. “Since I fell  _under_ one, obviously.”

“Right,” he says, smiling. “Silly me.” He looks to her rescuer. “Nice work, Hicks.”

“Can’t really take any credit for it, sir,” Hicks says. “She walked right into me.”

“Because I’m cursed,” Jemma says, pouting. As if six and a half months on an alien planet weren’t bad enough! You’d think she could at least leave the curse there, but  _no_.

Can’t escape the curse, can’t drink away the memory of its effects, can’t even walk down the bloody sidewalk without running into HYDRA…

“Life is terrible,” she mourns, and Ward grins as he wraps an arm around her shoulders.

“I don’t know,” he muses, turning her towards the warehouse he’s identified as his base. “I think things are looking up.”

 

 

_thestarfishdancer asked: He is going to BURN DOWN the WORLD for this._

Every time he starts to calm down, he catches sight of Jemma’s bruised and tear-stained face, and rage swamps him all over again. She’s still trembling, a little, pressed up against him like she wants to just melt into him and disappear, and it’s really pissing him off.

She’s in no state to notice any discrepancies between him and his cover, so he lets himself comfort her the way he wants to—lets himself hold her close and stroke her hair, murmur promises that she’s safe, that he’s gonna take care of her and protect her—and doesn’t bother with pretending any awkwardness.

It’s the first time he’s held her like this. He’s wanted to—wanted  _her_ —for months, but part of deep cover work is knowing yourself as well as you know your marks, and Grant  _knew_  that if he let himself get close to her, he would fall in love— _real_  love, not just the self-deluding kind that comes with getting too involved in a cover. He knew he couldn’t risk it.

So he’s gotten intimate with May and he’s been stringing Skye along for weeks, but he’s never touched Jemma, not like this. 

But keeping his distance was obviously pointless, because there’s nothing platonic about the storm brewing in his chest.

Six days he spent in that cell, and he was willing to go with it—to take the beatings their captors offered, wait out the pain and count on the team to rescue them. But the game changed when the violence was turned in Jemma’s direction—when they dragged her into his cell and hurt her in front of him, beat her bloody and threatened a lot worse than that.

He tore them to pieces, and his only regret is that he couldn’t make it slower.

But that’s okay. It means he’s got plenty of anger left over, plenty of fuel for the fire that he’s gonna use to immolate SHIELD. It’s their fault he and Jemma weren’t rescued, of course; like John before them, they were abandoned when SHIELD decided the costs outweighed the benefits of a potential rescue operation.

The team tried, but they were four people against a whole army. According to Grant’s contacts, they’re in recovery at a trauma center in Lisbon; only Skye made it out in mostly one piece, and that was more luck than anything else.

Grant’ll get his shots in for them, too—and he’ll make sure they get through this intact. But they’re the only ones; the rest of SHIELD is gonna burn for this.

Jemma seems to finally have cried herself out; she starts to sit up, then collapses back against his chest, breath hitching on a sob that probably originates in a spike of pain from her broken ribs. She’s in bad shape, and reminding himself that it could’ve been worse isn’t doing much for his temper.

“Hey,” he says, and rubs his hand soothingly over her back, careful to avoid the bruises he knows her shirt is hiding. “Careful. Try not to move too much; it’s still a couple hours ‘til you can take anything else.”

“You must have better things to do than play human pillow for me,” she says, even as she makes herself comfortable against him. “We have, after all, been betrayed by our own agency.”

There’s a touch of bitterness in her voice he’s never heard before, and he can’t resist hugging her a little closer.

“They can wait,” he says, kissing the words to her hair. “But once we’re all healed up, I’m gonna kill them all.”

And that she doesn’t protest—doesn’t argue for restraint—is proof enough of the necessity.

 

 

_safelycapricious asked: Five sentence: There is something dripping just outside the room; slow methodical thick plops and just when she thinks maybe there are no more there comes another._

On the bright side, she’ll probably be killed before it has the chance to drive her insane. But in the meantime, it’s bloody irritating.

And speaking of irritating…

“Bad news,” Ward says. He’s lounging in the doorway, all long limbs and sharp smile. Yesterday, she would have thought him terribly attractive. Today, he’s just terrifying. “Coulson refused the trade.”

“I told you he would,” she says, addressing the words to her knees. She can’t meet his eyes and snark him at the same time; she just hasn’t the courage for it. “Coulson isn’t the sort of man to trade one life for another.”

“Maybe not,” he says. He saunters towards her, and she clutches her knees tighter to her chest. “Or maybe it’s just that Skye’s his favorite.” He crouches down in front of her, giving her a mock-sympathetic smile. “You wanna lay odds that he’d have accepted if it’d been the other way around? If I offered to give her back in exchange for you?”

A tiny voice in the back of her mind—the same voice that spent Skye’s recovery from being shot wondering about the agents killed at the Guest House, about their families and what said families would be told of their deaths—says that he’s right, that Coulson would have traded her away to save Skye in an instant. She squashes it forcefully.

What-ifs don’t matter. What’s  _important_  is that Skye is safe. Jemma doesn’t know what Ward wants with her, what might’ve driven him to offer Coulson the deal in the first place, but it can’t possibly be good. She can take comfort in the knowledge that Skye is out of his reach.

“No?” Ward prompts. She looks away. “Okay, then. Be that way.” He sighs. “Still leaves me with the problem of what to do with you.”

“You could just let me go,” she suggests, and he laughs.

It’s not the laugh she’s used to, from him. He’s never been one to laugh much anyway, but on the rare occasions he did, it was nothing like this. There’s no restraint to him, none of the solemnity he’s always carried.

He’s not at all who they thought him to be. It’s just Jemma’s bad luck that she’s the one caught paying for the whole team’s ignorance.

“No, I don’t think so,” he says. He reaches for her, and, huddled back in the corner as she is, she has no way of escaping his touch. A sob wells up in her throat as he traces horribly gentle fingers over the bruising on her face. “But I can’t take you out in public, either—you’ll draw too much attention looking like someone’s battered girlfriend.” He sighs, aggrieved. “I could kill Hand for this…if I hadn’t already, that is.”

It’s not the first time since taking her hostage that he’s joked about his murderous habits. It’s not even the tenth. But she still hasn’t become inured to it, to this man she’s called friend making  _light_  of the lives he’s taken.

“Ah, well,” he says. “I’ll think of something.”

She barely bites back a sigh as his hand finally falls away from her face, but her relief is premature. He’s no sooner stood than he’s pulling her to her feet, and none too gently. She stumbles as he steers her towards the door with an arm around her shoulders.

“Where are we going?” she asks. She tries to move away from him, but he holds her tight to his side. She’s cold after hours spent in a freezing makeshift cell, and as his body heat leeches into her, a shiver runs down her spine.

It earns her a grin.

“I owe Coulson a few,” he says. “And just because he’ll choose Skye over you every time doesn’t mean he won’t feel guilty about it. So while we wait for our exit…” The arm around her shoulder tightens. “We’re gonna have some fun with him.”

Jemma has no idea what he’s talking about, but she’s absolutely positive it’s not good.

 

 

_Anonymous asked: "I'm so sorry. The test came back positive."_

Jemma’s lungs constrict at the words, which is a mercy; the effort of keeping her breathing even distracts her from the urge to cry. As she struggles for composure, Grant dismisses the doctor, who flees gratefully.

The click of the door closing is very, very loud in the silence of the room—and the sound of Grant engaging the lock is even louder. Jemma keeps her eyes on her knees as he returns to her side.

“So,” he says, voice chillingly pleasant, “pregnant, huh?”

Jemma opens her mouth, only to immediately close it again as her voice fails her. Terror beats away in her chest, thumping painfully at her heart.

“ _Three months_  pregnant,” Grant stresses. “Which is interesting, since we only got back together two weeks ago.”

She cringes, bracing for a blow as she catches movement in the corner of her eye, but all he does is force her chin up. 

His grip is only firm, not painful, but that doesn’t do much for her fear. Not when she’s looking into his eyes, which are burning with a heart-stopping fury. 

She wants desperately to believe that Grant would never hurt her—or, even worse, the unborn child she’s carrying. There was a time she would have believed it. There was a time she would’ve been  _certain_ of it, would never have even thought to doubt it.

But that was before—before the uprising, before he revealed himself for the heartless, psychotic murderer he is. Before she felt forced to make amends for his crimes the only way she knew how: by accepting an undercover assignment, talking her way back into his life and, more importantly, his bed, all for the sake of intel.

(And why, oh why, didn’t she consider that she might be pregnant? She knew perfectly well how Grant—this Grant, the horribly possessive man she met at the very end of their relationship—would react if he ever found out she was intimate with another during their separation. Why didn’t she think to check for bloody  _evidence_  of it?)

“Well?” he says, still so pleasant. “Do you have anything to say for yourself, Jemma?”

“I—I didn’t—” Her mind is empty. She has nothing to offer: no defense, no soothing words that might calm his rage. “I—”

Her stammering attempt to speak, pathetic though it is, is interrupted as Grant abruptly releases her chin.

“It’s okay,” he says, calm tone belied by the muscle ticking in his jaw. “We’ll have plenty of time to talk later. For now…” He brushes her hair behind her ear, fingers lingering on the shell of it. “For now, I think what we need is some privacy.”

Her brow furrows. Privacy? They’re alone in the room, how much more private could—

Oh. Oh no.

Even as realization strikes, Grant plucks the earring right out of her earlobe, curving his finger over it while he presses back with his thumb to remove it one-handed.

“It’s clever,” he says, holding up the earring—which just so happens to contain a one-way comm. “But I don’t think you’ll be needing this any longer, do you?”

Before she can stop him, he drops it to the floor and stomps on it, shattering her only method of communication with SHIELD…

And leaving her pregnant and very much alone in the heart of HYDRA with an angry specialist.


	18. soulmark amnesia

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> From a five sentence prompt that ran long.

_safelycapricious asked: (5 sentence) It's a tense moment and she, more than anything, doesn't want to draw attention to herself -- but her nose really itches._

She’s as discreet as possible in scratching it, but the movement is still enough to break the stand-off happening in front of her. The tall man—the stunningly attractive one—turns his back on the one named Whitehall, and she detects something oddly pointed in the gesture.

She doesn’t have time to wonder over it, however; the tall man is approaching, and before she can decide whether she wants to stand to meet him, he’s crouching in front of her with a kind smile.

“Hi, Jemma,” he says. “Do you remember me?”

Admitting ignorance is what got her into this mess in the first place, but it’s not as though she’ll be able to convincingly lie when she doesn’t even know this man’s  _name_.

(She does know  _him_ , though, she thinks. The sight of him makes her heart pound hard, moreso than simple attraction would explain.)

“No,” she says quietly. “I’m sorry. I don’t remember anything.”

“That’s okay,” he says, though somehow she gets the impression that it truly isn’t. “My name’s Grant. I’m your soul mate.”

He says it so offhandedly, so casually, that for a moment she doesn’t even absorb it. When she does, all she can do is stare.

“Really?” she asks. She forces herself to tamp down on the hope rising in her chest; just because he _says_  he’s her soul mate doesn’t mean he really is.

Though it fits with her reaction to him, doesn’t it? Her still-racing heart, the tightness in her chest—he has an obvious affect on her, and being her soul mate would explain it.

“Really.” Slowly and deliberately, as though to ensure she sees it coming, he reaches out and gently grasps her right hand. He turns it over to reveal the words she saw earlier, the  _Heard you needed a ride_  in an almost elegant print across the inside of her wrist. “May I?”

May he what, she wonders, but finds herself nodding anyway.

“Look,” he says, and—under her astonished gaze—draws a felt-tip pen from his pocket and writes  _Hi, Jemma. Do you remember me?_  under the words already present. 

He has to hold her arm out oddly to write on it, and it’s difficult to remain still. There’s something oddly seductive about the slide of the pen over her skin, something intimate that sends a shiver down her spine.

But she has larger concerns, and once he releases her hand, she brings her forearm in close again at once to compare the handwriting.

The two samples have one word and several letters in common, and the handwriting is very similar. It’s far more convincing than if he had copied the words already present; she can see new letters, letters not present in the original phrase, and study how they fit together with the originals.

They fit very well. And he wrote so quickly, so naturally, with barely a glance at the original mark.

It’s very possible that this man really is her soul mate.

Her heart lifts, a little—and then a little more when she looks up to find him watching her with a very fond smile.

“May I see yours?” she asks, before she can think better of it.

His smile widens. “Of course.”

He sits back on his heels and tugs his shirt up, then hooks his thumb in the waistband of his jeans and tugs down.  _Can I help you?_ is written in neat cursive along his hip. (Admittedly, it takes her a moment to spot; he’s not displaying  _much_  skin, but what he is showing is…very distracting.)

She reaches for it without thinking, but manages to stop herself just short of touching him.

“It’s okay,” he says, and hands her the pen. “Here.”

She hesitates. There’s no neat way to write anything on his torso, not at this angle, and she isn’t about to ask him to lie down. 

“Oh, right. Hold that thought.” He gets to his feet and crosses back to the other side of the room, where Whitehall appears to have grown bored with the proceedings; he’s deep in discussion with the man who brought her here, and he doesn’t so much as glance at Grant as he snags a notepad off the edge of the desk.

The notepad, when Grant returns to hand it to her, stirs something in her. Or rather, the logo at the top of it does. It’s an eerie red octopus with a skull for a head, and something about its eyes…

“Jemma?” Grant prompts, and she shakes off the odd spell. What does a logo matter when she’s trying to determine whether this man is her soul mate?

“Thank you,” she says, and quickly writes  _Can I help you?_ on the paper, followed by  _Jemma Simmons_  (her name, or so she’s been told) and  _stoichiometry_  (the first word to come to mind) for comparison.

Grant chuckles quietly when he sees what she’s written, but doesn’t offer comment, only reveals his mark again so she can hold the notepad up to it. He’s still standing, which puts his mark much closer to eye level than before and makes the comparison easy.

The handwriting matches perfectly. The notepad slips from her suddenly numb fingers and falls to the carpet.

“So,” she says, a little weakly, as Grant covers his mark once more. “We’re soul mates.”

“We are,” he agrees.

There’s a lump in her throat, and she thinks it’s the look on his face that’s put it there. It’s awful not to remember her own soul mate, but how much worse, she wonders, must it be to not be  _remembered_?

“I’m sorry,” she says, a little hoarsely.

“Don’t be,” he says, and crouches again to rest his hands lightly on her knees. “We’ll figure it out.” There’s something odd in his smile, something she can’t place at all—but then, it’s hardly a surprise she can’t read a man she doesn’t remember. “I’m just glad we found you.”

“Was I lost?” she asks, wondering again about the reception she received—about the surprise on the face of the man who brought her here when she admitted she didn’t know him.

“Very.” Grant takes one of her hands in his and squeezes gently. “But don’t worry. I won’t lose you again.”

She can’t say for  _certain_  whether that’s a good thing—soul mate or not, she knows absolutely nothing about him—but she finds herself smiling anyway.

She has a good feeling about Grant. She thinks things will be just fine.


	19. a serious discussion

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another five sentence prompt that ran long.

_batsonthebrain asked: "It's really hard to try holding a serious discussion when you look like that."_

And speaking of looks, if they could kill, the one Morse levels on him would be enough to do the job in two seconds flat. Happily for Grant, they can’t, and he’s alive to annoy her with a pleasant smile.

“Really,” he adds, “the needles under the nails, it’s just gruesome. Very distracting. Why don’t you just say you’re sorry so I can take them out, make this easier for all of us?”

Morse remains stubbornly silent, and Grant shakes his head.

“And people call  _me_  heartless,” he tsks, looking down at Simmons. “Can you believe it?”

Simmons glares at him—and it’s a pretty good one, for all that it’s kind of undercut by the tremble in her lip. She’s terrified, which is understandable; she missed the first half of this show. She doesn’t know what everyone else here knows.

Which means she doesn’t know yet that she’s on Grant’s side.

“If you won’t apologize to Kara,” he says to Morse, “how about Simmons? You two are friends, aren’t you? Doesn’t she deserve an apology?”

Morse is good; if Grant weren’t watching for a reaction, he would miss the minuscule tightening of her jaw.

Simmons obviously  _does_  miss it, because the look she gives him is nothing short of disdainful. He’s happy to see it, honestly; she’s a pale shadow of the woman he used to know, the person she was before HYDRA got its claws into her, but that she’s capable of aiming negative emotion at  _anyone_ is proof of how far she’s come.

He’s proud of her for it—for fighting her way back to herself.

“Bobbi has done nothing wrong,” she says. Since she’s still looking down her nose at him—very impressive, considering their height difference—she also misses how Morse’s eyes flicker away. “If anyone here owes me an apology, it’s  _you_.”

“Oh, Simmons. You have no idea.” 

He strokes his knuckles down her cheek, and isn’t really surprised when she (unconsciously, he’s sure) leans into the touch. Kara’s been touch-starved since she came back to herself, and it wasn’t a leap to guess Simmons would be the same—a guess that was proven correct during his brief reunion with the team. At least one of them—Fitz, Skye, even May and Coulson—was in physical contact with Simmons at all times, even in the middle of the arctic.

She’s needy. He knows what that’s like.

That the touching is plainly bugging the crap out of Morse is just a bonus.

“Haven’t you ever wondered how HYDRA found you?” he asks. “They took you out of a SHIELD safehouse, didn’t they? That should’ve been impossible.”

Simmons might be a little slower than she used to be, but she’s not an idiot. Her eyes flicker to Morse, and she worries at her lower lip.

“Bobbi?”

Morse looks away.

“She gave you up,” Grant murmurs, careful to keep his voice apologetic, as he smooths his hands over Simmons’ shoulders. She relaxes under his touch, but only a little. “Just like she gave up Kara.”

“Bobbi?” Simmons asks again. “Did you?”

Morse looks more affected by the waver in Simmons’ voice than she does by the needles under her nails.

“Simmons, I—” She cuts herself off and glares at Grant. Whether because his presence means she can’t apologize (since apologizing would be admitting that she did something wrong, which is exactly what she’s spent all day denying) or because he’s still touching Simmons is anyone’s guess. “I didn’t know you were in that safehouse. I had to make—”

“They broke me,” Simmons interrupts. She sounds more miserable than angry, but Morse still flinches. “The things they made me do…”

Her voice breaks as her eyes well with tears, and Grant shushes her, pulling her into a hug. He figures it’s even odds whether she’ll accept it…and she does. Her instinctive need for comfort outweighs her hatred of him—which is, in any case, severely dampened by all the messing around people have done with her brain lately.

So she clings to him as she cries into his shoulder, and he strokes her hair and holds her close.

“You’re okay,” he tells her. He keeps his voice low and soothing, but the smile he gives Morse is as smug as he can make it. She jerks hard against her bonds, but the shackles hold, and all she manages to do is rattle the table. “None of what happened was your fault, Simmons.”

She shakes her head against his shoulder, and he holds her a little tighter.

“It  _wasn’t_ ,” he insists. “It’s HYDRA’s fault for brainwashing you and Morse’s fault for giving you up. The only thing you did wrong was put your faith in SHIELD—and no one can blame you for that.”

“He’s right,” Kara says, and Simmons—who probably wouldn’t have heard her come in even if she _weren’t_  busy sobbing in his arms–starts. 

She tries to twist out of his embrace, but he holds tight, and after a second she collapses back against him. She doesn’t really wanna be let go; she’s just obviously feeling a little awkward clinging to Grant while his girlfriend’s in the room.

“It’s okay,” Kara tells her, laying a hand on her back. “It took me time to accept it, too. But Grant’s right; what happened happened  _to_  you. It wasn’t your fault.”

“No,” Simmons says, voice small. “I should’ve—”

Kara shushes her, drawing her easily away from Grant’s arms, and they share a smile over her head as Kara turns her towards the door.

“We should talk,” she says gently. “I’m sure SHIELD tried to help you, but they didn’t really understand, did they?”

Simmons silently shakes her head.

“I can help you,” Kara says. “I know exactly what you’re going through, and I got through it. You will, too. I promise.”

They make a pretty picture, Simmons and Kara, but Grant turns his back on them easily. There’ll be time enough to appreciate  _that_  sight later, once they get out of here.

Morse’s face, on the other hand—the delicious combination of despair and impotent fury—well, that’s a limited time offer, and Grant wants to enjoy it.


	20. it was all me ('cause i am flawed)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For the **Voyeur** theme at Ward x Simmons Summer.

Phil’s got a lot to do and a lot going on—the world is in shambles and somehow  _he’s_  the one who ended up holding the glue to piece it back together, which would be easier if his mind didn’t seem to be crumbling right alongside his agency—but he makes sure to make time to observe Ward’s treatment.

He doesn’t want to, not at all, but if he’s gonna force Simmons to save the life of a man who played her, betrayed her, and left her best friend with brain damage, the least he can do is keep her company while she does it.

It’s not easy. Before Ward was a traitor and a murderer, he was a friend—one of Phil’s subordinates, all of whom were more like family by the end of their run on the Bus—and watching him try repeatedly to end his own life is, in its way, just as horrible as watching him work for Centipede was. And if it’s hard for Phil, he can’t imagine how hard it is for Simmons, who not only loved but was  _in_  love with Ward.

He regrets encouraging that relationship, now. It’s one of many, many mistakes Phil’s made in the last year—maybe not the one that haunts him the most, but it’s in the top ten for sure.

And watching Simmons kneel in a puddle of Ward’s blood and stitch him back together does nothing to lessen that burden.

What comes after that, though, is even worse.

Simmons gets as far as stripping off her gloves, and then she just—stops. She stays there, heedless of the blood soaking her jeans, and stares down at Ward. He’s motionless, face pale and slack, and she lifts a shaking hand to trace the nearly-healed cut on his cheek.

Her lip trembles, and Phil’s heart clenches.

He’d like to look away, give her a moment, but she’s got a highly-trained and possibly psychotic specialist practically in her lap, and just because he’s lost a lot of blood and looks unconscious doesn’t mean he’s harmless. It’s a hell of a lot of trouble to go to for a ploy, but Phil’s not ruling it out. As long as Simmons is down here, she’s potentially in danger, and he’s lost too damn much to HYDRA already.

So even though he feels like nothing so much as a voyeur, he keeps watching. And that’s all he does; if he can’t give her privacy, he can at least let her pretend she has it, so he doesn’t move to comfort her. Doesn’t kneel beside her and rest his hand on her shoulder as she shakes with silent sobs, doesn’t murmur encouraging words as she cries into her hands, doesn’t promise that things will get better.

It’s not a surprise, though, that he really, really wants to.

Every time he sees Simmons, these days, he can hear Melinda’s voice in his head— _she’s just a kid_. They were all just kids, Skye and Simmons and Fitz, kids that he brought onto his team and threw into danger.

Now Skye’s training with Melinda, determined that the next time she faces down a HYDRA agent, she won’t need to be saved. Fitz is struggling with brain damage and a fractured relationship with Simmons that neither of them will explain.

And Simmons? Simmons is heading up science  _and_  medicine, helping Phil track down the 0-8-4s that were stolen from the Fridge, trying to help Fitz, and, in her rare free moments, saving the life of the man who effectively ruined hers.

And while this can’t be the first time she’s cried, it’s definitely the first time he’s seen her do it.

He’s piling too much on her. He always knew it, but watching this—watching her quietly break down—forces him to admit it. She might not be a kid anymore, but she’s not superhuman, either. She’s doing six agents’ worth of work, and she’s doing it with little to no support.

Something needs to change, because Simmons is about to break.

And Phil will be damned before he loses anything or anyone else to Grant Ward.


	21. (i like you) enough to destroy you

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Inspired by 3x02: Purpose in the Machine.

It’s probably petty of him, but Grant really can’t help it.

Not that he  _tries_ ; he’s a petty kind of guy, really. He’s accepted that about himself.

So, even though it means going out of his way, he makes sure to lead May and Hunter through the labs on the way to their cells. And, because he’s petty, he carries Mikaela the whole way there, just to watch them seethe. It’s gotta be driving them nuts, knowing that they could kill him so easily—all it would take is breaking out of their cuffs, and they’d trigger an explosion that would take out him and at least half of his men.

But SHIELD is still full of bleeding hearts, and the explosive in question is hidden inside a pretty little locket hanging from a pretty little girl’s neck. They won’t sacrifice her to cross him off.

He congratulates himself on that particular stroke of genius once again as he pushes the door to the chem lab open. None of his men could take May individually—hell, maybe not even all of them together. It’s much easier to force her to restrain herself.

The look on her face is just a bonus.

Of course, it’s nothing to the looks on  _both_  their faces when their progression through the lab is interrupted by an excited cry of, “May!” and a human missile in the form of Jemma. She glomps onto May so hard that May actually stumbles back a step—although that might just be shock.

“Simmons?” she whispers—actually  _whispers_. Grant’s never seen her so gobsmacked; it’s just as satisfying as he thought it’d be.

Hunter, beside her, is gaping. After a long minute, in which Jemma continues to cling, not caring at all that May can’t return the hug, he actually leans backward and tentatively nudges her shin with his foot. Then, when she proves solid, he does it again.

“Simmons?” he asks hoarsely. “What—how—”

“Hunter!” Jemma exclaims, and pulls away from May to throw herself at him instead. “Hello!”

Mikaela’s getting squirmy, so Grant passes her off to Jennings before moving in a little closer. Jemma, clinging tight to Hunter, doesn’t notice, but May’s eyes snap right to him.

“Hell of a thing,” he says. “Found her on an alien planet.”

Her mouth tightens. She’s gotta have a million questions, but she won’t put herself in the position of asking. It’d show too much weakness.

Hunter has no such compunctions. “Simmons, what—how are you here? What are you  _doing_?”

The second question is tacked on as Hunter’s eyes visibly catch on Jemma’s workstation. He probably understands even less of what’s there than Grant does, but he’s not a  _complete_  moron, and it’s obvious Jemma’s been busy.

Busy working for the enemy, that is.

Jemma pulls back at the change in tone, her mouth curving down sadly.

“What’s wrong?” she asks.

“Wrong?” Hunter sputters. “What do you  _mean_ , what’s—”

“Don’t I get a hug?” Grant asks, and Jemma whirls to latch on to him, forgetting Hunter at once.

Grant, unlike May and Hunter, is  _not_  restrained, and therefore can hug Jemma back. Probably a bit more smugly than he really needs to, but hey, he’s already admitted his pettiness. She cuddles eagerly into his arms, tilting her head back to meet his eyes.

“You brought visitors,” she says happily.

“Promised I would, didn’t I?” he asks, smoothing her hair back.

“You did,” she agrees. “Thank you.” Her smile fades a little, and she bites her lip. “Um, is Fitz—?”

“Not yet,” he says, freeing her lip from her teeth with his thumb. May and Hunter both tense, infuriated by the intimate move, and he lets his smile sharpen, trusting Jemma not to notice. “He’s a little harder to pin down, but don’t worry. I’ll get him here eventually.”

“Thank you,” she repeats, and squeezes him tightly.

“You’re welcome, baby.” He drops a kiss to her hair, just to really rub it in, and quietly regrets that he hasn’t gotten her to the point of sexual intimacy yet. He’s willing to bet their expressions if he gave her a real kiss would be  _hysterical_ —but she’s still a little too shattered from whatever happened to her on that planet. “Anything for you, you know that.”

“You son of a bitch,” May says, voice low and deadly, and Jemma twists to frown at her.

“May?” she asks. “Is something wrong?”

“May’s just upset they can’t stay longer,” Grant says, before she can answer. He doesn’t  _think_  there’s anything she can say to snap Jemma out of it, put her pieces back together with a word or two, but why risk it? “She and Hunter were only passing through.”

“Oh,” Jemma says glumly. “All right.” She aims a hopeful smile May and Hunter’s way. “But you will come back soon, won’t you?”

“Oh,” Hunter says, eyes fixed on Grant’s. “You can count on that.”

“Very soon,” May promises, and it’s a damn good thing looks can’t kill.

Jemma gets another hug in with Hunter and May—she’s been missing the old team a lot, and apparently Hunter’s close enough to count as well—and then bounces on to her toes to kiss Grant’s cheek as he motions the guards to get them moving.

“Thank you,” she says again.

“Welcome,” he says, with a brief squeeze to her shoulder. “I gotta go, okay? I’ll see you tonight.”

It probably won’t be  _tonight_  so much as in an hour or two—she still gets tired easily, and when she does she usually seeks him out, finds her way to his office and falls asleep with her head in his lap—but the implication is that she’s sleeping with him, and May and Hunter both catch it.

“Careful,” he says, with a nod to Mikaela—now occupied with a stuffed octopus Jennings has pulled out of nowhere. He’s pretty sure the reminder is the only thing that keeps May from breaking the hand he uses to shove her along.

“You bastard,” Hunter hisses as they leave Jemma’s workstation behind. She’s already forgotten them, nudged back into working by her very patient assistant. “What the hell did you do to her?”

“I saved her,” Grant says. “She’s very grateful.”

Very grateful and very broken—broken enough not to notice that her visitors are restrained and under guard or that her test subjects aren’t willing—broken enough not to remember that they’re enemies, not to care about the logo spray-painted on the wall of her lab.

He does wonder, though, if she’s broken enough that she won’t be moved when Hunter is bearing visible signs of extreme torture the next time she sees him.

Well. He won’t have to wonder long.


	22. when you were scared

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sapphireglyphs asked: "[ things you said when you were scared ] - Biospecialist (might I request this for one of the verse where they have a child together, please? If not, then anything else will do just fine. :D) Please and thank you~"

Even though it’s the middle of the night and she didn’t hear the door open, the hand that lands on Jemma’s shoulder doesn’t take her by surprise.

She’s been expecting him all day.

“She’s fine,” she says around a yawn. It’s late, and the panic that carried her through the immediate aftermath of the incident that landed them here has long since faded, leaving only worry and exhaustion in its wake. “They decided to keep her for observation because she lost consciousness, but all of her scans are normal.”

“So I’ve heard,” Ward says noncommittally. His hand trails down her arm as he moves past her to perch on the edge of Charlotte’s bed, and Jemma is grateful that her sleeves hide the way her skin prickles in response. “And her arm?”

“Broken,” she says, as he gently strokes Charlotte’s hair away from her bruised face. She swallows down the lump in her throat; evil he may be, but even a monster can love its children, and Ward loves their daughter very much. “But it’s a clean break, and the only one. All things considered, she was very lucky.”

Her tone draws Ward’s eyes away from his examination of Charlotte’s bright pink cast, and he frowns.

“What exactly happened?” he asks.

She exhales slowly, fighting for calm. She’s never in her life been as frightened as she was this afternoon; even all of Ward’s various crimes combined didn’t evoke the same terror as finding her daughter unconscious in the back garden.

“She jumped off the garage roof,” she says, as evenly as she’s able. “Trying to fly.”

Ward’s eyes narrow. “Where’s her nanny?”

Not where  _was_ , she notes—it’s very distinctly where  _is_.

“Already on her way out of the country with a new identity,” she says tiredly. “Don’t even try it.”

“Charlie—”

“—is a little girl with a little girl’s sense of adventure,” she interrupts. “Children get themselves into trouble, Ward. It happens.”

It’s not as though she doesn’t empathize—something that’s been happening more and more often since Charlotte was born. There’s a corner of her heart boiling with fury that Shannon took her eyes off of Charlotte even for a moment, let alone left her be long enough to get up to the roof and jump.

But children are reckless, and Charlotte more so than most. It’s not Shannon’s fault that she was hired to help care for the daughter of a scientist and a specialist—there’s not a cautious bone in Charlotte’s body, and Jemma’s well aware that she’s partially responsible for that.

Ward gives her a pouty look. “When are you gonna stop calling me that?”

“Calling you what?” she asks. She doesn’t believe for a moment that he’s given up on revenge so easily, but she’ll let him change the subject; Shannon is safely out of his reach, and Jemma has confidence in SHIELD’s ability to ensure that she remains so.

“ _Ward_ ,” he says, putting an almost sulky twist on it. “What kind of mother calls her daughter’s father by his last name?”

“You’d rather something less polite?” she asks.

He continues to pout. “You used to call me Grant.”

“Once,” she says. “It happened  _once_ , and I was…distracted, in case you’ve forgotten.”

“Oh, trust me,” he says, with a gaze so intent she nearly blushes, “I remember.”

She’s spared finding a response by a sudden chime, and Ward draws his phone from inside of his jacket with a scowl.

“Damn it,” he mutters, frowning down at the screen. “I have to go.” He twists to face Charlotte again, leaning in to drop a kiss to her forehead. “Feel better, sweetheart.”

There’s such clear reluctance in his posture as he stands that Jemma is moved to pity, despite herself.

“I’ll tell her you were here,” she says.

“No need.” Ward smooths Charlotte’s blankets almost absently, then turns away from the bed with a wide smile. “I’ll be back in the morning with her new nanny.”

It’s such a ridiculous statement, she has to laugh. “If you think I’m going to let one of your—your HYDRA  _goons_  within  _ten miles_  of Charlotte—”

“Hey.” He leans over her, gripping the arms of her chair and effectively caging her in. “I let you choose the last one, and look how that ended. This time, it’s my turn—and you can be damn sure none of my people will take their eyes off of her for even a second.”

Jemma intends to press the issue, but as soon as he finishes his sentence, Ward’s lips are on hers. It’s a very brief kiss, over before she can even push him away (surely she would have pushed him away), but it’s enough to stun her into silence.

“See you tomorrow,” he says. “I’ll bring breakfast.”

He’s out the door before she can find her voice—though not before she notes the heavily armed man standing just outside. Despite what she said to Ward, she knows well that his HYDRA goons have always been much closer than ten miles from Charlotte.

Suddenly uncomfortable in her chair, she leaves it in favor of Ward’s abandoned spot on the edge of the bed. Charlotte is still, face peaceful in her drugged sleep, and it’s almost frightening. She’s a sprawler, usually, and seeing her so motionless only reminds Jemma of finding her this afternoon.

“You and your courage, my darling,” she says, ghosting her fingers along the bruising on Charlotte’s face, “are going to be the death of me one day.”

She casts a rueful glance at the now closed door. Only sheer willpower keeps her from touching her still-burning lips.

“Assuming your father doesn’t finish the job first.”


	23. kiss on the cheek

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ilosttrackofthings asked: "Cheek kiss + biospec"

“Don’t,” Jemma says sternly.

Grant frowns at the hand she’s holding in his face. Damn it. 

“Don’t what?” he asks, as innocently as possible.

“Don’t  _anything._ ” She closes the first aid kit with way more force than it really needs. “I was very specific, Grant. Wasn’t I specific?”

“You were,” he admits, because she was.

“I made it  _very clear_  that you weren’t to be injured on this mission at all,” she says. “Let alone severely enough to require treatment. And yet—” She puts the first aid kit in the appropriate cabinet and then all but slams it shut. “—here we are.”

“Jemma—”

“The next words out of your mouth had  _better_  not be ‘it was only a scratch,’ Grant,” she warns. 

As gorgeous as Jemma is when she’s mad, Grant generally prefers it not to be at  _him_. Her (admittedly understandable) anger over his recklessness in the field doesn’t usually last long, but things get pretty tense on the Bus while it  _does_.

So he’s gonna have to blame the head injury for the, “But it  _was_  only a scratch,” that slips out before he can stop it.

“Only a scratch, hmm?” She crosses her arms under her breasts, which is just really not fighting fair  _at all_. “Tell that to the  _twenty-seven stitches_  I just put in your chest.”

“And I appreciate your care,” he says, giving her a hopeful smile. “I’m sorry for worrying you.”

He moves a little closer—physical contact is great for defusing her temper, especially when paired with a sincere apology—but stops in the face of her glare.

“You  _should_  be sorry,” she says, and pointedly turns away to turn on her microscope. “Now, go.”

He frowns at her back. “Go?”

“Leave,” she says. “Depart. Vacate my lab.”

“Sweetheart,” he starts, but stops as she twists away the second his hands land on her hips.

“Your injury has been seen to,” she says, accent taking on that crisp, upper-class note that only shows up when she’s  _really_  annoyed. “And now you may leave.”

“Really?” he asks, fighting a smile. He obviously scared her with this injury, and he does feel bad about that, but the fact is that Jemma is adorable when she pulls out her superior act. “But what if I wanna stay and talk for a while?”

“Too bad,” she says. “I’m not interested in talking to you.”

“And what if I wanted to stay and  _not_  talk?” he asks, trailing his hands down her arms.

She bats him away. “I don’t care. Leave.”

“Okay, fine.” He knows from experience that giving her a few hours to work through her fear and anger will do them both a world of good, so he’ll go. Still, he doesn’t like to leave her so visibly upset. “Can I have a kiss before I go?”

“ _No_ ,” she says. 

“Not even a little one?” he presses. “Please?”

Jemma sighs heavily, like she’s wondering why the hell she even bothers with him, but he can tell she’s fighting back a smile.

“You may kiss my cheek,” she allows, as if granting him a huge favor. “If you must.”

“Oh, I must,” he assures her, and darts in to peck her proffered cheek before she changes her mind. “Thanks for the stitches, sweetheart. It won’t happen again.”

She grumbles something uncomplimentary about pigs flying, but she’s smiling as he leaves the lab, so he’s gonna call it a win.


	24. kiss on the hand

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> safelycapricious asked: "Hand kiss Jemma whoever. <3 

Jemma stops just outside of the shack. She’d like to claim that it’s an act of defiance, a refusal to buckle under the threats that Ward’s leveled against them, but in point of fact, her feet simply fail her at the sight of the waiting Quinjet.

Ward is right behind her; she can feel his warmth against her back, and part of her—the part that hasn’t been able to stop seeing Koenig’s corpse, that can’t forget how different dead flesh feels under gloved hands when it belongs to a friend—is already bracing for violence.

Instead, the hand that lands on her shoulder only gently squeezes, as though in comfort.

“Sorry, Simmons,” Ward says, honestly sounding it. “We were flying over on patrol when we spotted your heat signatures.” He squeezes her shoulder again. “It’s a quick flight. Nothing to worry about.”

She doesn’t know whether to blame the knots in her stomach on the comfort from a murdering traitor or the prospect of flight on a Quinjet, but either way, they’re unpleasant.

“I can’t,” she starts, and then bites back the rest of the sentence. Is she honestly expecting Ward to be swayed by her phobia? He’s  _HYDRA_ , for god’s sake.

“I know,” he soothes. His hand slides along her back until suddenly, his arm is wrapped around her shoulders, trapping her against his side. “Don’t worry. I’m right here.”

She has to swallow past the lump in her throat before she can ask, “Is that supposed to comfort me?”

“It did before,” he says, pleasantly, even as he steers her towards the Quinjet, and she  _hates_  him, because it’s true.

Ward was the only other member of the team present for that unfortunate day on which she discovered that while her recent fear of heights is entirely manageable on the Bus, it becomes paralyzing on Quinjets. It’s the ramp, she thinks; knowing that the push of a button will open the craft to the air mid-flight and that there’s no way to escape that gaping emptiness steals every last drop of her courage. She’s fine on jump jets, which don’t open in the way Quinjets do, and on the Bus she could keep as much distance as she liked between herself and the cargo ramp.

Quinjets offer no such space, and it’s terrifying.

“That was before,” she manages, as Ward guides her up the ramp. Before, when she could lean into his warmth without fear, when she could  _trust_  the steady hand he kept on her back and the low voice that spoke soothing words—before, he could comfort her. Now?

Now he’s only one more thing to be afraid of.

“It’s a quick flight,” he says again, shoving her none-too-gently into the seat beside Fitz. He grabs her hand at once, clinging with a force that suggests he feared the worst when she was slow to follow him onto the Quinjet. “Sit tight; it’ll be over before you know it.”

The length of the flight makes no difference to her terror; as soon as they lift off the breath leaves her lungs, and she holds to Fitz’s hand with all her might. The Quinjet turns in the air and her stomach turns with it.

Fitz is saying her name, but it doesn’t help at all—all she can think of is the wind at her back as she watched him scream before she jumped.

Her vision begins to grey out, and she’s just starting to fear she’ll faint when a warm hand wraps around the back of her neck, under her ponytail, and squeezes firmly. Her stomach jolts; she gasps in a breath.

“That’s it,” Ward says in her ear. “Keep breathing.”

Intending to shove him away (and damn the consequences), she’s surprised to find that she’s gripping his thigh with her free hand. She lets go at once, but Ward is too quick for her; he catches her hand in his and holds on tight, and she can’t bring herself to let go of Fitz to fight him.

The Quinjet lands with a  _thunk_ , and all of the tension rushes out of her at once, leaving her to slump against Fitz, feeling as though she’s run a marathon.

“Jemma?” he asks worriedly.

“I’m all right, Fitz,” she says, resting her head against his shoulder. “It’s just—”

“Quinjets.” He spits the word like a curse, but his hand is unbearably gentle as it pats her knee. “I know. But it’s over now.”

Actually, it’s just beginning—as she’s reminded when Ward uses his hold on her other hand to tug her (somewhat roughly) to her feet.

“Time to face the music,” he says, lifting her hand to press a soft (and  _baffling_ ) kiss to the back of it. “But don’t worry. I’ll take care of you.”

It’s not a threat.

Jemma thinks—and believes Fitz agrees, from the way his hand has tightened around hers—she would have preferred that it were.


	25. things you didn't mean

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Anonymous asked: "Jemma/Ward: Things you said, but didn't mean."

“You pull anything like that again, I’ll throw your ass off this Quinjet at 20,000 feet.”

Coulson’s bristling with fury—so much so that Grant’s positive it’s not an idle threat. Still, he can’t help but needle him a little…and hey, the tension could do with a little lightening, anyway.

So he smiles, wide and pleasant. “I’ve jumped out of planes from higher.” He pauses for a beat, just long enough to let the reference sink in, and then adds, “How  _is_  Simmons these days, anyway?”

For a second, Grant thinks Coulson is actually gonna take a swing at him. The mention—the  _reminder_ —that Coulson owes Simmons’ life to Grant is obviously enough to infuriate him.

Coulson actually owes  _every_  member of the team’s life, including his own, to Grant, and several times over, but that thing with Simmons has to bug him the most. All the other times he saved their lives were in the field, in the normal course of their missions; if he hadn’t been there to pull the trigger, someone else might have.

But no one else was going after Simmons. When Grant tore out of the briefing room that day, May and Coulson were both standing still; if he hadn’t gone,  _they_  wouldn’t have, either. Fitz—poor, stupidly brave Fitz—would’ve be the one to jump after her, and since he’s never had even an hour’s worth of jump training, he and Simmons probably  _both_  would have died.

Grant saved  _two_  lives that day, and Coulson so clearly doesn’t appreciate the reminder that it puts a nice warm feeling in Grant’s chest.

He can’t resist poking further.

“Seriously,” he says, as Coulson turns away, “how is she? And  _where_  is she, for that matter? I wanna introduce her to Kara.” Fitz and Hunter are pointedly ignoring him, so he tells Kara, “You’ll like Simmons. She’s cute.”

Coulson’s eye actually twitches. It’s beautiful.

Kara gives him a flirty look.  It was well hidden under the layers of brainwashing, but the more she gets better, the more obvious it is that she’s got a sense of humor very much in line with his. It’s a big part of why he likes her so much.

“How cute?” she asks.

“Downright adorable,” he says as he joins her behind Fitz. “She’s got an accent—like his, but less annoying,” he adds, with a nod to Hunter. “And she does this thing when she’s thinking—”

“They’re taking off,” Fitz says, loudly, over him.

“Should I be jealous?” Kara asks teasingly, ignoring Fitz.

“No, no,” Grant says. “You’ve got nothing to worry about. Simmons and I only hooked up once, and it was for a mission.”

Fitz, Hunter, and Coulson all freeze.

Grant thinks about making a comment about how great it was, really rub it in—make sure they think he means hooking up in the traditional sense, and not just the making out and minor groping they did in order to escape the attention of some guards—but decides to just savor the horrified silence instead. Kara’s grin is a nice bonus.

And even better than the silence, of course, are the reactions that follow it.

“What?” Fitz squeaks.

“ _What_ ,” Coulson nearly growls.

“You  _bastard_ ,” Hunter says—probably just because he feels left out. It’s not like he even  _knew_  Grant or Simmons back then.

“Oh. Right.” Grant gives them an angelic smile. “I forgot we never told you about that. Don’t worry,” he adds, taking the pilot’s seat (since someone’s gotta fly the plane; List, Bakshi, and Peterson are getting away, which everyone else seems to have forgotten). “I took good care of her.”


	26. a history of making a mess

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Post-3x04: Devils You Know

Grant’s got a bullet wound in his back. He’s down a significant portion of his weapons cache. And, while Andrew Garner is most definitely dead, meaning May is now feeling at least a fraction of Grant’s pain, he didn’t even get to see her face when it happened.

All of which is to say, he’s really not amused when Hicks drags Jemma Simmons into his new hideout.

Warrington and Ortilla bristle on either side of him. They’ve both been hovering like overzealous bodyguards since what happened at the depot; it’s almost cute. And Markham, of course, is taking the failure of security implied by Hunter’s ability to walk right into the heart of their operation  _very_ personally. Only Grant’s timely intervention kept him from taking it out on Kebo.

Say what you want about Grant, he’s got some incredibly loyal people.

“Ran into her outside,” Hicks announces, shoving Simmons forward. She stumbles, taking longer to regain her balance than Grant would’ve expected, and ends up steadying herself against the edge of his desk. He leans back in his chair and regards her silently as Hicks adds, “Pretty much literally.”

Security patrols are divided into five rings, each progressively further from the base, and Hicks was on patrol in the outermost ring. So Simmons wasn’t exactly hanging out on their doorstop, but—yeah. Way too close for comfort. Hicks was right to be suspicious—and Grant’s idea to share pictures of all known SHIELD agents with his people was definitely a good one.

“Let me guess,” Grant says. Simmons’ eyes have been flickering nervously around the room, but at his words, her gaze returns to him. “You were just in the neighborhood.”

Simmons swallows. “As it happens, yes.” She shies away as Hicks shifts closer to her, and her voice is a little uneven when she continues, “I had no idea you were even here.”

“Hell of a coincidence,” he says, and tips his head back to look at Warrington. “You buying it?”

“No, sir,” she says, face set.

“What about you, Ortilla? You think Simmons just happened across us?”

“Not a fucking chance, sir,” is Ortilla’s contribution.

“And Hicks wouldn’t have picked you up if he wasn’t suspicious, so I guess it’s unanimous.” Grant spreads his hands, then folds them and leans forward, ignoring the spike of pain from his shoulder. “The innocent act isn’t playing, and probably wouldn’t even if you  _hadn’t_  tried to kill me the last time we met. So why don’t you tell me what you’re doing here?”

Something passes over her face at the mention of her murder attempt, but it’s gone before Grant can pin it down. Less fleeting are the reactions from his people; Warrington and Ortilla both move a little closer to him, Ortilla even going so far as to cock his gun, and Hicks moves away from Simmons…putting him at the perfect angle to throw himself between her and Grant, should she try anything.

Seriously. It’s adorable.

Simmons doesn’t seem to notice, though.

“Regardless of whether you believe it or not,” she says, “it’s the truth. I would never have known you were here if not for…”

She trails off with a shrug. She’s back to searching the office, eyes flitting from person to person to window like she’s trying to plan an exit strategy but keeps getting distracted by utter terror. Grant sits back, studying her.

The last time he held her prisoner, it was on the Bus—in Cuba, back before John died. She was terrified then, yeah, but she didn’t show it, not like this. She spent the whole time watching him with that icy glare of hers; even when Fitz was trying to appeal to his better nature, she just stared him down.

This, the nervous twitchiness, it’s new.

He doesn’t like it.

“I’d like to believe you, Simmons,” he says. “I really would. But, considering the fact that the last time I dealt with a SHIELD agent I got  _shot_ …” He smiles pleasantly. “You see my problem.”

Actually, she might not see it. She looks downright confused.

“Are you  _really_  still upset about Skye shooting you?” she asks, frowning. “That was more than a year ago! And you’ve done no small amount of damage to  _us_  since.”

Grant frowns, examining her expression. She’s…not kidding. She has no idea Hunter shot him, does she?

Something here isn’t adding up. Grant doesn’t believe for a second that Hunter isn’t proclaiming his victory far and wide; the bastard may not have killed him, but he  _did_  wound him, and for a love-struck, revenge-driven  _moron_ , that’s not nothing.

So why wouldn’t Simmons know?

“No,” he says, “I’m over Skye shooting me. That was my own fault for giving her my back; I shouldn’t have forgotten how well I trained her. Hunter, however—Hunter, I’m very upset about.”

Sure enough, she stares at him, wide-eyed.

“Hunter  _shot_  you?” she asks. “How?  _When_?”

The ‘how’ is gratifying, he’s gotta admit. If there’s one thing he appreciates about the team, it’s how readily (if grudgingly) they admit his skill.

“Three weeks ago,” he says. “He lied his way into my base and then open fired.” He pauses significantly. “I lost a lot of good men that day.”

“Oh.” Simmons worries at her lower lip. “Nobody said anything.”

She looks lost, and Grant is starting to wonder if maybe she’s telling the truth about just stumbling across them. It’d be some pretty terrible luck—but then, sending Simmons up against him when he’s got a whole organization behind him would be a pretty terrible  _plan_.

She couldn’t manage to cross him off when his only back-up was a brainwashed operations manager; surely she—or SHIELD—has to know she doesn’t have a  _chance_  when he’s got a crew of hyper-loyal specialists at his back. And Hicks would’ve searched her before bringing her in, which means she must be unarmed.

“Okay,” he says, drumming his fingers on the desk. “Let’s say I believe you. What were you doing here, if not looking for me? You’re a long way from the Playground.”

She hugs herself, looking remarkably young for a woman who murdered a man and then stared down the barrel of Grant’s gun the last time they met, and doesn’t answer.

“Come on, Jemma,” he says, and smiles as she starts at the sound of her first name. “Don’t leave us in suspense.”

Her eyes flick past him, to Warrington and Ortilla, and whatever expressions they’re wearing are apparently enough to scare her into line.

“I was running,” she says softly.

Huh. “Oh yeah? From what?”

“SHIELD.”

For a second, he’s sure he’s misheard—not out of the realm of possibility, since her voice is barely a whisper.

“SHIELD?” he echoes, and she nods, shamefaced. “Why are you running from  _SHIELD_?”

“I can’t—I can’t give them what they want,” she says. She sounds miserable; she’s clearly on the verge of tears. “I don’t know how.”

Well, then. He doesn’t know what she’s talking about, but it sure sounds like something he can use.

So he puts on a smile and gives a nod to Hicks, who pulls up a chair and guides Simmons to it. Ortilla and Warrington relax, but only slightly. They’re not ruling out the possibility of a trap, not yet.

Simmons seems even smaller once she’s seated, hands tucked under her thighs and shoulders hunched. Actually, she looks like she’s bracing for a punch.

With that in mind, he makes sure to keep his voice as kind and as comforting as possible when he says, “That sounds like something I can help you with. Why don’t you tell me more?”

He’s got a lot of work ahead of him, no doubt, but that’s okay. Simmons is worth the effort.

Seeing his old team’s faces when they realize he’s stolen her right out from under them will  _more_  than make up for the trouble.


	27. "after you."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ilosttrackofthings asked: "“After you.” + biospecialist"

Jemma’s week is going very poorly.

She’s unsteady on her feet, blood loss stealing her strength away, and the sharp pain that comes with every wheezing breath is, in addition to unpleasant, very worrying. And the pounding in her head is not at  _all_  being helped by the endless monologue she’s been forced to endure.

On the bright side, it does seem finally to be wrapping up—though not so soon that it doesn’t cover the sound of the door opening.

“And now, my dear,” says the ringleader of the band of morons who have been holding her prisoner for three days, “I’m afraid it’s time for you to go to hell.”

As he raises his gun, Jemma smiles. It’s a painful one, thanks to the bruises and abrasions on her face, but she truly can’t hold it back.

“After you,” she invites, and watches with extreme pleasure as Grant shoots the man twice in the back.

(With an ICER, of course. After what Jemma has suffered here, she’ll be very surprised if her captor is allowed to die in less than a month.)

Before her captor has even hit the ground, Grant is past him, and her collapse into his arms is half relief, half honest inability to keep her feet any longer.

“Hey, baby,” Grant says, voice an almost tremulous murmur she barely hears over the roaring in her ears. “Sorry I’m late.”

“I’d say you’re just in time,” she corrects, and gratefully clings to him as he sweeps her up into his arms. “I’m ready to go home, now.”

He kisses her hair, lingering long enough that she suspects he’s struggling to maintain his composure. For herself, relief has washed away everything else; she’s numb to anything but the warmth of his body and the strength of his arms.

She’s safe with Grant. There’s no cause for fear any longer.

“I’m ready to have you home,” he says, finally, and turns for the door. 

She rests her aching head on his shoulder and closes her eyes, letting sensory input wash over her without bothering to absorb it. There are sounds which might be voices—Grant’s people, most likely, coordinating the eradication of her captor’s operation—and a thick smell in the air she’s fairly certain is blood, but she doesn’t care about any of that.

Grant is here and they’re going home. Nothing else matters.

(Well, some form of painkiller would be nice, too. But that really goes without saying.)


	28. "i made your favorite"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> safelycapricious asked: "Biospecialist: “I made your favourite.”"

Jemma knows he’s there long before he says anything. She can feel the weight of his gaze on her back, the crackle of electricity his presence always sparks in her veins. 

But it’s wrong. It’s all wrong.

So she stays curled around the pillow she’s clutching and keeps her eyes on the wall, refusing to roll over and face him. The cold pack under her cheek has long since become warm, and the pressure, without the accompanying chill to ease it, is unpleasant. But she’d have to lift her head to remove it, and she’s not going to do that. She’s going to feign sleep for as long as she can—even though _he_  knows it’s an act just as well as she does.

It’s a long, long time before he finally speaks—long enough that tears are welling up again. She thought she was all cried out, but apparently not.

“Baby,” he says. “Why don’t you come down and have some dinner?” 

She won’t let her tears fall. Not just because her throat is already sore and her eyes are aching from all of her previous sobbing, but also because if she starts crying, he’ll try to comfort her, and she can’t bear that. She can’t.

So she swallows down the lump in her throat and forces her voice to remain even when she says, “I’m not hungry.”

It comes out unfortunately petulant, but at least it’s not tremulous. She’ll take it.

“Come on.” The bed sinks under his weight as he sits on the edge of it, and she curls tighter around her pillow. “I made your favorite.”

Of course he did.

“I’ll heat some up later,” she says. “Right now, I just want to sleep.”

“Jemma,” he sighs. “Would you look at me, please?”

No. She’s not going to look at him. She  _can’t_.

“I’m trying to sleep,” she says, as forcefully as she dares.

His hand slides over her shoulder, and she squeezes her eyes shut tight, bracing herself. But he doesn’t force her to face him and his hand doesn’t keep going; it just sits there, resting on her shoulder, the heat of him bleeding through her shirt to sear the skin beneath.

This time, she can’t hold back a sob.

“Baby,” he says, rubbing her back gently. His hand is familiar, but still—it’s wrong. It’s all so wrong. “Baby, I’m sorry. You know I would never usually—you just have to be good, that’s all. I wouldn’t have to hurt you if you’d stop fighting me.”

His voice is low and reasonable. There’s a hint of apology in his tone, but mostly it’s chiding.

It’s  _wrong_.

He sounds like Grant. He looks like Grant. He kisses her—hugs her—makes love to her like Grant does.

But he’s not Grant. She has a split lip and a bruised cheek and a sprained wrist that serve as proof—as strong, terrible reminders of what she allowed herself to forget.

This isn’t real.

This is a simulation, an immersive reality program. It’s very, very convincing—the warmth of his hand, the throbbing pain in her injuries, the panicked fear building in her lungs the longer he remains beside her—but it’s not real.

She knew from the start that it wasn’t, of course. She’s fought off what feels like dozens of simulations already, although likely it’s only been four or five. 

That’s the problem, of course. She fought off the others, and now the programmers have learnt what it takes to trick her.

“Jemma,” he says. “Come down to dinner. Please?”

She ignores him.

This one didn’t start like the others did, with fear and pain and suffering. In those, it was easy to keep in mind the truth, to set aside the horror of her experiences and wait the program out.

But this one started so peacefully. Jemma and Grant in a nice house, living a nice life. Happily spending every day together, the way they’ve never managed in reality—not with Grant always on assignment and Jemma herself so frequently preoccupied in the lab.

It’s not  _exactly_  what she’s always wanted, but it’s close enough that she was lost to it—too weak to fight it, after what happened in the last simulation. She let herself forget that it wasn’t real.

And that, of course, is when the bad set in, taking over the good. 

Slowly, at first—a sharp word here, a too-tight grip there—but the distinct  _wrongness_  has been building higher and higher lately. The fear was subtle, creeping in through the cracks in what used to be a perfect relationship, and she didn’t notice until it was too late, until (who she thought was) Grant struck her in the middle of an argument.

That first time wasn’t enough to shock her into remembering. This time—the fifth—was, and she’s determined not to lose the truth again.

This is a simulation. This is a  _trick_. They’re trying to—to  _brainwash_  her, to erase her love for Grant and replace it with terror. 

But she won’t let them. Grant—the  _real_  Grant—will come for her. He will rescue her and he will burn the _world_  down around every single person involved in this nightmare she’s trapped in, and she won’t cringe from him when he does. She doesn’t want him to think, even for an instant, that she fell for their tricks. She doesn’t want him to know the kind of pain they’ve used his face to inflict upon her.

She won’t let them win. She won’t.

“Jemma,” not-Grant says, and this time his voice is sharper. “I’m not gonna ask you again. I went to a lot of trouble to make dinner for you. Come eat with me.”

She clutches her pillow and ignores him.

“ _Jemma_.” His fingers dig into her arm, right over the still-livid bruises he left during their third fight, and a whimper escapes her before she can stop it. “Don’t make me move you.”

It’s not real. It’s not Grant.

But the pain  _feels_  real, even though it’s not, and she’s not in a hurry to invite more. The smart thing to do is to cooperate—wait it out. Though she’s determined not to let them make her fear Grant, it’s not an easy thing to fight. Not when there’s so  _much_  to fear.

The best thing to do is to go along with him—to do her best not to provoke him. Even though she wants nothing more than to throw the truth in his face, to confront him with the reality (or lack thereof) of the situation, she can’t.  _That_  will only get her a new simulation, and she doesn’t want to imagine what they might have that’s worse than this.

So, reluctantly, she releases her pillow and sits up. 

“All right,” she says, keeping her face determinedly angled away from him. “I’m coming.”

He kisses her temple the way Grant does, too. But the threat behind his smile is something that’s never been aimed at her—something that’s not  _supposed_  to ever be aimed at her.

She won’t forget again.


	29. "come here. let me fix it."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Anonymous asked: "“Come here. Let me fix it.” Biospecialist"

Jemma can hear Ward swearing to himself before he even reaches the bottom of the stairs, and it’s enough to have her looking up from the terribly interesting data about the machine recovered with Agent Coulson. He–Ward–has been even  _more_  on edge (if such a thing is possible) since they rescued Coulson, but still, he’s not usually given to swearing.

The cause of his frustration is immediately obvious. He’s wearing a suit, very sharp, and is struggling to tie his tie. It’s no wonder he’s having trouble—thanks to his splint and his wounded shoulder, he’s forced to do it one-handed—and her heart goes out to him, in spite of how bloody irritating he’s been these last few days.

“Come here,” she says, setting her data aside. “Let me fix it.”

He gives her a little scowl. “I got it.”

“No, you don’t,” she chides. In aid of getting it done, she crosses the lab and meets him in the doorway, rather than waiting for him to come to her. “Let me.”

“ _Simmons_ ,” he says, in a long-suffering tone. “I’m fine.”

Despite his protests, however, he surrenders his tie to her easily enough when she holds out her hand.

“Should I get you a step-stool?” he asks. His tone is a little sharper than would usually accompany the gentle teasing, but she’ll take it.

Even if it  _is_  ridiculous. Their height difference is significant, yes, but it’s still less than a bloody foot.

“I am not  _that_  much shorter than you,” she says, looping the tie over his neck, “and you know it.”

“I don’t know,” he says. His voice is quieter, she presumes in deference to her proximity, and for some reason, it makes her more aware of the timbre of it. “You’re pretty short.”

“And you,” she says, easily knotting the tie, “are  _very_  stubborn.” She tightens the knot, then frowns up at him. “And what has you so upset  _today_ , hmm?”

The little smile he’s wearing fades at once, to be replaced by another scowl.

“I have to go to the Hub for debriefing,” he says.

“Yes, I know.” Her own debrief—follow-up debrief, rather, as they were all debriefed on the very night they found Coulson–is scheduled for Friday. “So?”

“So, I have to  _go to the Hub_ ,” he stresses. “I don’t like leaving you three alone.”

“Oh, Ward,” she sighs. She should’ve known, really; he’s been oddly and overly protective of her, Fitz, and Skye this week. “There’s no need to worry about us; the Bus is still crawling with agents.”

“Exactly,” he says darkly, eyeing the lab like he expects to find one of said agents hiding in a corner.

She frowns. “They’re SHIELD agents, Ward.”

“But they’re not part of our team,” he says. He looks down at her, and she’s suddenly conscious of how close she still is to him; his tie is long since tied, and somehow her hands have come to rest on his chest. Embarrassed, she starts to step back; he catches her by the hips, and his voice is very low indeed when he finishes, “So how do I know I can trust them with you?”

She can’t quite gather her thoughts enough to respond to the (utterly absurd) question. His hands are warm, even through her jeans, and despite the way the hard edges of the splint dig into her skin, it’s a very pleasant sensation.

And he is so very, very close.

“I—” she swallows. “Um—”

“I can’t let anything happen to you,” he murmurs, and then he kisses her.

For a moment, she’s shocked into stillness—Ward is  _kissing her_!  _What_  is  _happening_?—but his mouth is warm and his hands are firm when they come up to cup her face, and oh—

Needless to say, all thoughts of conversation are quickly forgotten.


	30. you don't have to walk alone (Jemma/Will)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Post-ep (and AU) to 3x05: 4,722 Hours

Being back on Earth, for all that it’s what she’s been longing for, is more than a little overwhelming.

After so long in the planet’s relative darkness, the Playground’s fluorescent lighting is far, far too bright. The recycled air is enough to freeze her, and the less said about the constant  _noise_ , the better. Even the floor—so much more regular, more  _smooth_  than she’s used to—leaves her off balance.

It’s all wonderful, of course, but still—it’s enough to drive a woman mad.

And if  _she’s_  having trouble, it’s nothing to poor Will. She was on the planet for six and a half months; he was there for  _fourteen years_. Life on Earth is nothing but a distant, dreamy memory to him, and having been dropped into the middle of a secret organization full of strangers can’t help.

They cling to one another.

In her room, the lights dimmed as far as they can be, with the door firmly shut and their respective weapons within reach, they curl together in her bed. It’s not terribly large, but there’s space enough for them to cuddle, and cuddle they do.

Here in safety, she whispers to him about SHIELD and about HYDRA, about the Inhumans and what happened six months ago. It’s as much apology as explanation; the others watch him warily—skeptically—for all that Coulson greeted him like a son when she introduced him as the only reason she lived past her first month on the planet.

She disappeared for six and a half months and came back with a boyfriend. They’re suspicious.

As ever, Will listens more than he talks. He rubs her back when her voice deserts her—and isn’t that pathetic? Six and a half months she survived in hell, limbs and even hope mostly intact, and yet she stumbles over memories—and doesn’t push any further than she can take. It’s his comfort, his lack of demands, that lets her push herself.

Patient he may be—and he is so, so patient—but he needs to know this. If he’s going to stay (and he’s going to stay, he  _must_ ), he can’t be left in ignorance.

It’s a lot to take in, she knows, and at one point—somewhere around the GH-325—she realizes how far she’s asking him to suspend his disbelief.  _It_  was one thing, but this?

But he takes it well.

He’s so lovely. She worried, a bit, when she first realized they had made it home, against all odds—worried her affection for him would disappear, that the feelings isolation built would be destroyed by her reunion with Fitz and the others.

Luckily, her worries were for nothing. She loves the others, of course, has missed all of them and is so relieved to be reunited with them (and she won’t deny that May’s continued absence stings), but she _needs_  Will. Needs his hand in hers when they venture from her room, needs his solid chest against her back as she sleeps, needs his constant, steady presence when she flashes back to the planet.

Needs him as a focal point, when life on Earth becomes too much.

So they stay in her room, just the two of them, long past the point at which her explanations conclude. Sometimes they have sex—hands and lips and a brief flash of a smile against her shoulder as she sighs his name—and sometimes they sleep—nightmares quickly chased away by a reassuring touch—but no matter what, they’re together.

They’re together. They’re here and they’re safe and they’re not alone.

Nothing else matters. Nothing at all.


	31. soulmates (Jemma/Will; past Jemma/Grant)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Anonymous asked: "ooh.... Could I suggest Jemma/Will soulmate trope? triple word score and a cookie if Jemma also is Ward's soulmate and Fitz goes to him to rescue Simmons."
> 
> Takes place in the same verse as [a candle blowing in a storm](http://archiveofourown.org/works/5106785).

Despite being a scientist—a woman of  _logic_ —Jemma can’t deny that she’s always held a number of very fanciful notions about her soulmates.

Notions that took something of a beating when, far from the prince she always (secretly) imagined, Grant Ward turned out to be a nightmare of a murderous traitor. Still, even after that terrible revelation, she clung to her hope. The words scrawled across her ribs are to be ignored and forgotten, because the man they belong to is the furthest thing from worthy, but who’s to say about the ones that wrap around her bicep?

Perhaps  _You’re still here_  will bring her better luck.

She’s not expecting to hear it whilst stranded on an alien planet, and certainly not from a man who’s locked her in a very small cage. It’s so unexpected, in fact, that she gets halfway through a sarcastic retort (because of  _course_  she’s still here; he’s  _locked her up_ ) before she truly absorbs what he’s said.

“What did you say?” she asks. She scrambles to her feet, supporting herself with the help of the cage. “You—you said I’m still here.”

Her captor/possible soulmate is backlit and too far away to truly make out, and as she moves forward, he only moves back.

“Those are my words,” Jemma says, heart racing with hope. If he’s her soulmate…well, most immediately, if he’s her soulmate there’s a chance he’ll let her out of this cage. It’s not a sure thing, not at all, but it’s a  _chance_.

Unfortunately, he doesn’t seem immediately inclined to open the cage. He doesn’t move towards her—doesn’t even speak.

“What are yours?” she asks. She tries to remember what she said when she first saw him and fails, but logically speaking, it was likely a demand for answers. “Did I say them? Are—no! Wait!”

But it’s no use. Despite her protests, he leaves again, back down the tunnel and out of her sight.

It’s nearly two days before he returns, this time bearing food and water. It’s both a relief—because she’s long since consumed everything that was waiting for her when she first regained consciousness—and a terrible disappointment, because if he’s bringing her sustenance he can’t mean to let her out just yet.

This time, he gets much closer—close enough to see. He looks…rough. Tired and dirty and scarred, and his eyes would be lovely if they weren’t so empty.

She wonders, with a sudden chill, just how long he’s been here.

“My name is Jemma Simmons,” she tries. “Doctor Jemma Simmons. I’m from Earth, and I came here through a portal and, since you speak English, I suspect you might have as well.”

She wants to tell him she can help him—she  _should_  tell him she can help him—but curiosity has always been her biggest vice, and she wants to know. She  _needs_  to know. So she angles her arm towards him and watches those empty eyes fall to her bicep.

“These are my words,” she says, voice made hoarse by the tightness in her throat. “You said them earlier. Is this your handwriting?”

He stares at her mark for a long moment—long enough that she allows herself to hope—and then shakes his head once, sharply.

“You’re not real,” he says, and her heart sinks.

“Is that a no?” she asks, trying for humor.

He ignores her—and the wild accusations that spring to her lips when he puts the food he’s brought in her cage. Despair rises up to choke her as he walks away once more.

Even if he  _is_  her soulmate, that’s no guarantee of her safety. Experience has taught her—taught her very well—that a soulmate can be a greater threat than a stranger. She can’t afford to wait him out.

She needs to get out of here.

It’s a surprise that her hastily concocted escape plan works, and even as she flees, she thinks a little more kindly of him. He might have locked her up, but he cared enough to enter her cage and check on her when she feigned illness. That says something about him, doesn’t it?

(Of course, the spear she takes to the leg says something even more.)

Her escape attempt, as painfully as it ends, does gain her quite a lot, answers about her captor—Will—and this planet most of all. He thinks the planet is evil, that it has  _moods_ , and that’s a delusion that becomes much more understandable when she finds out he’s been here for  _fourteen years_.

It’s no wonder he’s been driven to paranoia, after so long in isolation. She can forgive him his suspicions about her—which leads her, of course, to her suspicions about  _him_.

“You know,” she says, tentatively, after obtaining his silent forgiveness for her accidental implication, “you never answered my question.”

“Which one?” he asks, a little dryly. “You’re full of questions.”

“Yes,” she says, with a smile, “it’s one of the best things about me, don’t you think?”

He glances at her, at that, but doesn’t comment.

“But,” she continues, undeterred, “I was referring to my question about my mark.” She turns to face him properly, extending her arm so that he can see the words he spoke, imprinted on her bicep. “Is this your handwriting?”

Slowly, carefully, he sets down the ball he’s holding and twists to face her. His hand shakes a little as he brushes his fingers over the  _still_  in  _You’re still here_.

“Yeah,” he breathes. His other hand comes up and tugs the loose collar of his shirt aside to show her the  _Who are you? What do you want?_  that loops across his collarbone. “Yours?”

“Oh,” she says. The second  _you_  is bisected by a gnarled scar, and she finds herself tracing it without thought. “That’s—yes. That’s mine.”

 _You’re_  mine, she wants to say. Her hope, her second chance, the silent promise that kept her from giving up entirely after everything that happened when SHIELD fell.

But that’s far too much weight—too much history—to lay upon a man she’s only just met, soulmate or no. Honestly, it will never be fair to place that burden on him, even if they know each other for another fifty years; what her other soulmate did to her isn’t his to bear  _or_  to make up for. She’ll be careful to keep that in mind.

“So,” she says. “We’re soulmates, then.”

For the briefest second, what she’s nearly positive is a smile pulls at the corner of Will’s mouth. Then it’s gone, disappearing behind an expression she knows all too well as he pushes to his feet.

“Yeah,” he says roughly, “and we’re stuck here.”

He stalks away, back through the curtain, and she lets him go with a heavy heart. That was the face of a man who’s lost all hope, and while she can hardly blame him ( _fourteen years_  alone, and all of it spent bearing the burden of his friends’ deaths), she can’t allow it to stand.

He’s suffered, her Will—suffered so much and for so long, and he was so alone for it.

But it didn’t twist him, didn’t make him cruel. These past four days spent locked in that cage were unpleasant, but they certainly could have been worse. He didn’t even believe her to be real, but he still gave her food and water—still cared enough to open the cage and check on her. And when she escaped, he cared enough to chase after her, to carry her (even though she struggled the whole way) back here and hide her from the threat he believes stalks the planet above them.

He’s shared his food and supplies—both of which are very finite resources—without hesitation.

He’s kind. Rough around the edges, yes, and probably delusional (she doesn’t believe for a moment that this planet has moods), but still kind. He didn’t deserve what’s happened to him, and he doesn’t deserve to live in such misery.

There’s a way home, she’s certain of it. She’ll find it or Fitz will, one of the two, and they’ll go home, back to Earth.

And in the meantime?

In the meantime, she’ll share her hope with Will. She has plenty to spare, and after the way his words carried her through…well, it’s really the least she can do.

(Five and a half months later, back on Earth with her team and no Will, she’ll cling to that hope once more—his words on her bicep, still stark and black. If he were dead, they’d be grey, but they’re  _not_. He’s alive.

He’s alive, and she’s going to bring him home.)


	32. "i'll still be here when you're ready"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Anonymous asked: "biospecialist “I’ll still be here when you’re ready.”"

Jemma is ignoring him.

Grant’s gotta admit, it’s not what he expected. Cursing, sure. Accusations, definitely. Tears, too.

But the silent treatment?

That came out of left field.

She hasn’t even made eye contact since they brought her in. Day in and day out, she just sits on her cot and stares at the far wall. She’s not unaffected by his presence—she still flinches sometimes when he speaks—but she’s doing a damn good job of pretending to be.

He’s pretty clearly in disgrace. It would be funny if it wasn’t so fucking irritating.

He only manages to stand it for six days before he gives in to temptation and actually enters her cell. He doesn’t ask first—better forgiveness than permission, and all that—which means there’s no one there to observe. It’s just him and his very, very angry girlfriend.

His very, very angry girlfriend who can’t quite hide her surprise when he walks in.

“There we go,” he says, pleased. “Finally, a reaction.”

She lifts her chin, a little, but otherwise ignores him.

“Come on, baby.” Sitting down next to her on the cot makes her tense, but moving probably counts as acknowledging his existence; she stays right where she is. “Don’t be like that.”

He doesn’t bother to hide his smile as her hands fist in the blanket beneath her. He knew that’d get her back up—but sadly, it’s still not enough to get her talking.

“Jemma,” he says, drawing it out a little. “You’re really gonna just sit there and ignore me?”

The answer seems to be yes; her lips thin as he reaches out to brush her tangled hair behind her ear, but she doesn’t speak. He cups her jaw and turns her face towards him, and the cell is quiet enough that he can  _hear_  the uptick in her breathing…but her eyes stay downcast.

He sighs.

“You know there’s no call for the silent treatment,” he says. “Yes, I lied. But not about the important things.”

 _That_  actually gets a reaction, and he’s forced to tighten his grip on her jaw to keep her from turning her head away.

“I  _love_  you,” he stresses, angling his head in an unsuccessful attempt to meet her eyes. “That was the truth. Everything we shared was real.” He rubs his thumb along her jaw, prompting an audible swallow. “The only lie was who I really work for. And how much does  _that_  matter?”

She breathes in, long and slow, like she’s about to speak, and for a second he thinks he’s finally broken through her wall.

Then the door at the top of the stair opens, breaking the silent spell he’s been weaving on her, and her jaw firms beneath his fingers.

“Damn it,” he mutters, even as Coulson’s sharp, “Agent Ward!” reaches his ears.

“Sorry, Director,” he says. He knew he’d be caught eventually—was actually counting on it, since there’s no way to open the barrier from this side—but he was hoping it would take a little longer. “Just trying something new.”

“Yeah, I can see that,” Coulson says, in a tone that tells Grant they’re gonna be talking about this at length. “Get out of there.”

“Yes, sir,” he says, on a sigh, and lets his hand fall to Jemma’s knee. No longer held in place, she looks away at once. “You can take your time, baby. I’ll still be here when you’re ready.”

“ _Ward_.”

“Coming, sir,” he says and, after a swift kiss to Jemma’s temple that makes her flinch, pushes to his feet.

When he checks the Vault’s video feed later, he can tell she’s been crying. He regrets that—more than he can say—but at least it’s  _something_.

It’s not  _quite_  worth the lecture he gets for going into her cell, but it’s close.


	33. unappreciated adjustments

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thestarfishdancer asked: Drive by no reason biospecialist prompting! "If they think that he will reward him for the surprise 'adjustments' they made to her while he was away, they were very, very wrong."

It’s true he’s been frustrated by the way Jemma’s been with him since the uprising—her trepidation, her timidity, the visible pause to consider before she initiates any kind of contact—but  _this_  isn’t any better. In fact, it’s worse.

There’s nothing behind her smile. No hesitance, yeah, but no  _joy_ , either. She’s not excited, not distracted, not turning some scientific puzzle over in her head even as she talks to him. She’s just—smiling. Happy.  _Compliant_.

She welcomes him home with a smile and a long kiss, and when she pulls back she’s already unbuttoning her shirt. He thought about her the whole time he was gone, thought about that sideways look her lab partner had been giving her for weeks—thought about taking a few days off when he got back to remind her (and everybody else) just who she belongs to—but right here and right now, he’s never wanted her less.

Looking down into her empty, devoted eyes, all he can think about is Lorelei. His stomach turns.

“Sorry, baby,” he says, catching her hands as they move to her fourth button. Her shirt is gaping open already, and he can see fading bruises on her collarbone—remnants of whatever torture they used to break her. It’s an effort to keep his voice even. “I’m not staying long. Just stopped in to drop off my things.”

“Oh.” Jemma looks disappointed, but not the way she  _should_  be. Not like she’s hurt he’s blowing her off after more than a month away. “Will you be gone long?”

He glances down at her hands in his, eyes catching on the red, swollen skin of her wrists. There’s a carefully stitched wound along the back of the right one; if he’s any judge, it’s the result of pulling too hard against restraints.

The rage he’s been fighting since he walked in the door surges up again, and he closes his eyes against it, struggling for calm. Jemma doesn’t deserve his temper—he needs to save it for the ones who  _do_.

“Yeah,” he says, opening his eyes to her slightly puzzled (but still so  _empty_ ) smile. “It’ll be a while.” He lets go of one hand to brush her hair behind her ear, chest tight at the dark circles under her eyes. “Why don’t you get some sleep? You look like you need it.”

“Hap—” she starts, and he cuts her off with a quick kiss, because if he hears her use that fucking conditioned response, he doesn’t know what he’ll do.

He stays with Jemma until she falls asleep. He’d like to stay longer, just in case—will she have nightmares?  _Can_  brainwashed people have nightmares? Are the memories of the torture she suffered somewhere in there, waiting to strike, or are they buried under too many layers of brainwashing to torment her?—but he just can’t contain his temper.

There are too many people involved in the brainwashing process for him to give each and every one of them the slow, lingering death they all deserve. He’s gonna have to pick and choose his targets carefully, figure out which of them are the most guilty. Most of those involved will get away with a quick bullet or two.

But for Whitehall and two or three others? He’s gonna take his time. 

They’ll be  _lucky_  if they only suffer tenfold what Jemma did.


	34. one more secret (between two old lovers)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ilosttrackofthings said: "“I was just thinking about you.” + Grant/Jemma"

The residual fear doesn’t last nearly as long as Jemma expects it to, but it _does_ last longer than she’d like.

She shakes the whole way home, of course, and when she arrives her hands are still trembling so badly it takes three tries to unlock the front door. Once she manages—once she’s inside, with the door safely closed and locked behind her—she slumps back against it, fighting tears.

If she starts crying, she’ll never stop…but standing about feeling sorry for herself won’t accomplish anything, so she pushes away from the door and heads for the bathroom. Her first aid kit has a few chemically-activated cold packs, and one of those will do well to ease the throbbing in her cheek.

She’s wondering, as she enters the bathroom, whether she has any anti-microbial ointment for her split lip, but the thought slips away as she catches sight of herself in the mirror.

She looks—

Her fear disappears beneath a sudden rush of cold clarity. She studies herself: the dried blood under her lip, the pallor of her skin beneath the redness of her developing bruises, the long, thin scratch on her neck where her necklace broke.

She looks like a victim.

“You are _not_ a victim,” she tells her reflection sternly. Her reflection, fragile and bruised, appears unconvinced. “You _promised_ yourself you’d never be a victim again.”

She can’t let this stand, clearly—and as she runs a towel under the tap, she finds that a slow, burning fury begins to fill the empty space her fear used to occupy.

How dare they. How _dare_ HYDRA make her a victim. She’s one of the most brilliant scientists on the _planet_ ; who are they to make her afraid?

They have to pay for this.

Fortunately, she knows _exactly_ how to make that happen.

She abandons her towel and her plans for first aid, instead returning to the living room to fetch her phone from her handbag. The number she needs isn’t in her contacts any longer, but despite her best efforts, she’s been unable to forget it, and it’s only a moment’s work to dial it.

He answers on the third ring. “Yeah?”

“Grant,” she says, and he makes a delighted noise.

“Jemma!” he exclaims, an almost disquieting amount of affection in his tone. “I was just thinking about you. To what do I owe this pleasure?”

She inhales slowly, taking a moment to steel her nerves. For this, there will be consequences—there always are.

But HYDRA needs to be punished.

“I need your help,” she says.

He pauses. “Oh?”

There’s a wealth of danger in that single syllable. It’s absurdly comforting.

“I presume you know where to find me?” she asks.

“Of course,” he says easily. “I’ll be there in forty minutes.”

It chills her, a little—she had no idea he was so close; exactly what has he been up to?—but she reminds herself that it’s all to the good. The sooner HYDRA learns its lesson, the better.

“Thank you.”

“Anything for you, Jemma,” he says, and she closes her eyes against the painful sincerity in his voice. “You know that.”

She thought she did, once—and she supposes some part of her must still believe it. Why else would she call _him_?

“Forty minutes,” she says, for lack of anything else, and hangs up.

It actually takes him thirty-two, and her anger doesn’t fade one bit in that time. She cleans herself up, applies ointment and arnica gel as necessary, and ices her cheek for twenty minutes. The necessity of it—the reality of her injuries and the memory of how she received them—only firms her resolve.

She is _not_ a victim, and she’ll see Daniel Whitehall pay for making her feel like one.

Grant, surprisingly, announces his arrival with a knock, rather than simply letting himself in. She appreciates the courtesy—that must be what it is; her lock would have posed no obstacle to him—and means to tell him so.

But the pleasant smile she opens the door to is replaced by murderous fury the second he gets a look at her face, and she forgets speech entirely as he gently ushers her back.

“Baby,” he coos, kicking the door shut behind him. “What happened?” His hand cups her jaw tenderly, angling her face towards the light so he can examine the damage. “Who do I need to kill?”

“Daniel Whitehall,” she says, and Grant’s eyebrows go up.

“Really?” he asks, searching her eyes. “That easy? You’re not gonna try to stop me?”

It was a point of contention between them, once—how quickly he was moved to violence on her behalf, his tendency to overreact to every slight against her, real or imagined.

But that was before. Things are different now.

“Why do you think I called?” she asks evenly.

“Ah,” he murmurs. “So that’s what this is about.” He brushes her hair away from her temple, fingers tracing the edge of the bruising there. “First time you’ve talked to me in months, and it’s because you want me for your personal assassin?”

For all her doubts about him—for all the anger she’s been holding in her heart since the uprising—his touch still causes a warm comfort, radiating out from every point of contact. The gentle slide of his other hand over her hip makes her throat tight.

“Is that a problem?” she asks.

He smiles, slow and dangerous. “Not at all.”

His expression promises quite plainly that Whitehall is in for a world of suffering. But regardless of the violence in his eyes, his touch remains soft as he brings her forward, into his arms, with the press of his hand to her lower back.

If she so desired, she could break his hold easily. But despite herself—despite all reason and logic—she _doesn’t_ so desire.

It’s been a terrible day. Doesn’t she deserve comfort?

So she sinks into his embrace, lets familiar arms and a steady heartbeat chase away the last trace of fear lingering in the hollow of her chest. Her tension melts away under the soothing pass of his hand over her back.

“Don’t worry, baby,” he says, dropping a kiss to her hair. “I’ll take care of it.”

“I know you will,” she says.

It’s acknowledgment and concession both, and he knows it, if his pleased hum is any indication. It’s been months since she trusted him for anything, but she trusts him with this.

Daniel Whitehall will pay for every bruise and every ache—for every ounce of fear he instilled in her. It will be messy and brutal and, likely, enough to traumatize even the most hardened of HYDRA’s specialists.

She doesn’t doubt that at all.

Whether she’ll be able to walk away from Grant again once it’s done…

On that, she has  _several_ doubts.


	35. it's gonna take more than this

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm kind of cheating on this one, because it's longer than I would usually post to the drabble collection but I don't want to post it independently. Because reasons.
> 
> Please see the end note for vaguely spoilery trigger warnings. 
> 
> Title from Halestorm's _Amen_. Thanks for reading and, as always, please be gentle if you review!

One might expect that after being confined to the penthouse for the past three months, Jemma would be relieved to be escorted downstairs.

Instead, she’s experiencing a slow, creeping dread that grows with every step. By the time she and her escort—an unusually grim Hicks (but then, everyone has been rather grim, of late)—reach the basement, her blood could well have turned to ice.

Is this it, she wonders? Has Grant’s patience finally run out? Is this when he gives in and resorts to brainwashing?

As it happens, it’s not. The situation is much, much worse than that, as she discovers when she enters the room to which Hicks gestures.

“Jemma,” Skye gasps, and Jemma stops dead.

Grant smiles, clearly pleased by her reaction, and pushes away from the corner he’s lounging in to join her.

“Hey, baby,” he says.

As she has for the last three months, she ignores both his words and the kiss to her hair that follows them. This time, however, it’s not spite that renders her silent; instead, her attention is fixed on Skye—the cuts and bruises littering her visible skin, the blood soaking through her shirt, the odd angle at which her right arm has been restrained. Under the bright, harsh lights of the sterile cell, each injury stands in stark relief.

Jemma’s vision swims as her eyes well with tears. It’s clear Skye has been here for some time, being beaten and likely tortured, and she never had any idea.

If she were speaking to Grant, would she have been able to prevent this?

“Are you okay?” Skye asks, shadowed eyes scanning Jemma for any sign of injury, and she has to clap a hand over her mouth to hold back a sob.

Is _she_ okay?

Jemma has spent three months feeling very abused, locked away in her penthouse with its comforts. Looking at poor Skye, who has suffered so awfully, is enough to make her stomach turn in on itself with shame.

“Oh, she’s fine,” Grant tells Skye dismissively. His hand slides down and across Jemma’s back to rest on her hip, and as chilled as she is, the heat of his skin is scorching. “But she’s been a little rebellious lately, and I gotta be honest, I’m pretty tired of it.”

“Good for you,” Skye says to Jemma.

She barely bites back a whimper. She can’t stop searching Skye’s lovely face, half categorizing the damage and half drinking her in—it’s been so long since she saw any of the team, and she’s _missed_ them.

Still, she’d rather spend the rest of her life in isolation than see any of her team subjected this sort of torment.

“So,” Grant continues, ignoring Skye, “here’s what’s gonna happen. Jemma, you have two choices. You can ask me to let Skye go, and I will. I’ll have her patched up and then dropped off in a public place she’ll be able to find her way home from, and she won’t suffer any further harm.”

He pauses, fingers digging into her hip, and she braces herself for what she knows must be coming. This isn’t the first time he’s offered her this sort of choice—just the first time the consequences have been aimed at someone other than her.

“Or,” he says, “you can keep up the silent treatment, and you and I can stand here and watch Skye be tortured. Again.”

Fighting her rising nausea, Jemma draws in a deep breath. It’s horribly loud in the silence of the room.

“Don’t,” Skye says. Her voice is hoarse enough to make Jemma wince, but her expression—past the blood and the bruises—appears entirely earnest. “Don’t you dare, Simmons. I can take whatever he throws at me.”

“Doubtful.” Grant’s voice is flippant, a fitting accompaniment to the idle circles he’s tracing on her hip. For all of her resistance, she hasn’t yet discovered how to stop her body’s reaction to him, and warmth is beginning to curl under her skin; if she didn’t know how _not_ worth the consequences it would be, she would shove him away. “And anyway, why should you have to? It’s not like I’m asking a lot, here. You don’t even have to beg, Jem. A simple ‘please’ will do just fine.”

“Don’t,” Skye repeats, wide eyes locked on Jemma’s. “Don’t let me be what breaks you.”

But she is. She already has. Jemma has maintained her silence for three terrible (but nowhere, _nowhere_ near as terrible as what Skye must have faced here in this basement) months, but she can’t keep it now. Grant has found the perfect leverage.

So she swallows past the lump in her throat and, without breaking Skye’s gaze, croaks, “Please.”

It’s not the first time she’s spoken in three months. She’s spoken to herself (quietly, in the shower, when she could count on the water to hide the sound, and under the cover of blaring music) quite often—one more tiny act of rebellion, giving herself what she’s so determinedly denied Grant.

But it _feels_ like the first time. For how it hurts—for how the single word grates against her throat—and for how much effort it takes, she might well have been silent for _years_.

“Sorry,” Grant says, though he certainly doesn’t sound it. In fact, his voice is rich with satisfaction as he steps behind her, pulling her back into his chest and resting his cheek against her temple so as to murmur, “I didn’t quite catch that,” in her ear.

“Please,” she says again, voice as tight as his arms around her waist. “Please let Skye go.”

Skye closes her eyes, but not before Jemma can see the tears in them.

“Simmons,” she says quietly.

“That’s all I wanted to hear, baby,” Grant says. He kisses her jaw, soft enough to send another chill through her. “Now that wasn’t so hard, was it?”

He knows perfectly well that it _was_. Her rebellion, such as it is, has ended; now that he has proof that she’ll buckle in the face of a threat to her team, to resist him in any way would be the height of selfishness. Hence forth, until the moment he grows bored with her (and oh, how she hopes it will be soon, now more than ever), any act which displeases him carries with it a risk to the people she loves.

“I’m sorry,” she tells Skye, voice cracking—not from disuse, but from tears, as she loses the battle against them and they spill over. “I’m so sorry, this is all my fault—”

“No,” Skye says at once, and that she’s crying as well is enough to make Jemma feel a thousand times worse. “No, Simmons, you couldn’t have known—”

“And _that_ is enough of that,” Grant interrupts, clearly displeased. One arm falls away from Jemma’s waist; the other, he uses to turn her back towards the door. “Say goodbye, baby.”

A desperate “Skye,” is all she manages before Grant forces her out into the corridor, where Hicks is waiting against the far wall. The last she sees of Skye, she’s straining against her shackles, battered face twisted with frustration and fury.

The door is made of thick steel; its slamming echoes ominously in the silence of the corridor. Jemma flinches.

“Hicks,” Grant says. “Get a medic in for Skye, then have her sedated and taken—” he gestures vaguely “—somewhere. I don’t care. She’s to be left alive and without further harm in a place she can make it home from.” He smiles down at Jemma, and his expression would be sweet, if not for the sharp edge to it. “After all, I did promise.”

“Yes, sir,” Hicks says.

Grant squeezes Jemma’s hip firmly. “Hicks is gonna take care of Skye. Say thank you.”

“Thank you, Hicks,” she says obediently, and even though she _is_ grateful, her words are just as heavy as her heart.

She didn’t think, before, that anything could ever be more painful than that first moment of realization, the day that she discovered the charming civilian man she’d been dating for months was nothing of the sort.

She was wrong. She was so unbelievably wrong. Handing a psychopath leverage in the form of one’s friends is magnitudes worse than simply _realizing_ he’s a psychopath.

“You’re welcome,” Hicks says without meeting her eyes. He gives Grant a nod, then slips past them, into Skye’s cell.

_He_ doesn’t slam the door. Jemma flinches anyway.

“Good girl,” Grant praises, and urges her down the corridor, towards the lift. His arm is still tight around her waist, which is almost a relief; she feels curiously hollow, and his touch anchors her. “I hope you realize you’ve got a lot of apologies to make—to me _and_ to my men. After the way you’ve been freezing us out for months…well, you’ve been pretty rude, haven’t you?”

By his tone, it’s clearly _not_ a rhetorical question; still, it takes her a moment to respond. She’s fallen out of the pattern of conversation, these last three months, and she finds she has to search for a reply, even to so simple a question. And, of course, there’s the fact that habits are hard to break; part of her, angry and defiant, wants to carry on with the silent treatment, even though she’s now ended her streak.

But fear of his retaliation—it would be no trouble at all for him to double back down the corridor and hurt Skye ( _again_ )—quashes that impulse quite firmly.

“Yes,” she says finally. She buys herself a moment by swiping at her cheeks, leaving her sleeve wet with tears but her face, at least, a little drier. “I suppose I have.”

“Aww, that’s okay,” he says, tone sympathetic, as though she’s expressed a deep and troubling guilt, rather than just accepting that which he’s assigned to her. “They’re forgiving guys; I’m sure they won’t hold it against you.”

There’s a glaring omission there, one she’s positive he wants her to ask about. She doesn’t dare ignore the implied demand…but she _does_ wait until they’re safely in the lift, closed away from the corridor full of cells—full of silent threat of who else she loves might be hiding behind those solid steel doors.

“And you?” she asks.

With one quick, smooth tug, he both turns her and moves her, so that she finds herself pressed chest to chest with him. It’s something he did countless times when they were dating, pulling her into him for a surprise kiss while they were walking or cooking or whatever else, and the act stirs something like longing in her heart.

She squashes it viciously.

“I’m less forgiving,” he says. His free hand traces the side of her face, where what was once a nasty cut (inflicted two months ago, when an escape attempt went badly wrong) has faded to the barest hint of a scar. It’s a gentle touch, yet still menacing—made all the more so by the fact that she’s suddenly occupied wondering precisely how many of Skye’s injuries were inflicted by this very hand. “But I’ll let you make it up to me.”

Under that implication, her hollow feeling abruptly disappears as fury and terror rush in to curdle in her stomach. She can’t let that pass unremarked. She’ll suffer whatever she must, for the sake of the people she loves, but she won’t let Grant call it anything but what she is.

She thinks of Skye—of her face, of her voice when she said _Don’t let me be what breaks you_ —and it gives her the courage to meet Grant’s eyes.

“Oh?” she asks. “So is it to be rape after all, then?”

The word is bitter on her tongue and accusing off of it. Grant’s face goes blank.

She’s spent three months sleeping beside him unwillingly (a truth made all the more painful by the fact that before the revelation, she was there _very_ willingly). He hasn’t allowed her to sleep anywhere else—not in the spare room, not on the couch, not even on the floor—no matter how often she tries. She sleeps in his arms every night, whether she likes it or not.

But it’s been _only_ sleeping. They haven’t had sex since before she discovered the truth of him, and in the last conversation (fight, rather) they had before she began the silent treatment, he promised her that they _wouldn’t_ until she wanted it. Of course, he had a rather more smug way of putting it—namely, that he won’t touch her again until she begs him for it—but the intent was the same. There’s been no end of struggle between them, as she’s resisted his attempts to either win her over or break her, depending on the day, but that’s one line he hasn’t crossed.

The silence draws out long enough to make her heart pound as Grant stares down at her, utterly expressionless.

Then he surprises her by laughing.

“Of course it’s not that easy to break you,” he says fondly, tucking her hair behind her ear with gentle fingers. “I should’ve known.”

She swallows, searching for words. “That’s not an answer.”

“No, baby,” he says patiently. The lift dings as the doors slide open on the penthouse, but he doesn’t move—and she can’t either, held against him as she is. “I told you I won’t fuck you until you beg for it, and that hasn’t changed.”

“If I _beg for it_ under threat to the lives of my team,” she says, “it’s still rape. It may be less violent than simply forcing me, but it’s no less unwilling.”

If he uses his new leverage for sex, she won’t fight him. But she won’t let him pretend it’s anything else, either.

“Noted,” he says, lips quirking. “Though I think we both know I don’t need threats to make you want me. We’re gonna get there eventually.” His hand slips down from her hip to squeeze her rear, and then, finally, he steps back. “But you’re right, that would be rape. So—just to be clear—nothing, good _or_ bad, is gonna happen if you don’t beg me to fuck you. I promise.”

He walks past her, into the penthouse, and, oddly cold with her relief, she hugs herself as she turns to watch him go.

It’s a reassuring promise, and yet it leaves a horrid knot in her stomach. She has no idea why.

“Now,” Grant says, over his shoulder, “how about some lunch? We’ve got a lot to catch up on.”

Solely out of habit, she tries a few of the buttons for the lower floors. The lift, as always, remains stubbornly motionless.

“Fine,” she says and, resigned, follows him out of the lift.

The doors shut silently behind her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Trigger warning** for discussion of rape. It does not happen, it will not happen, and that is what the conversation is about, but there is the potential for triggering there.


	36. ten sentence collection one

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Over on tumblr, I did a series of ten one-sentence fics for a variety of ships. This chapter contains Markham/Evie (OCs), Jemma/Will, and Jemma/Brock Rumlow.

**Markham/Evie**

**1\. Angst  
** HYDRA ends not in a blaze of glory, but in a series of arrests; torn between loyalties, he cuts a deal to protect her, and every night after imagines he can feel Ward’s accusing stare burning through the single wall that separates them on Death Row.

**2\. AU  
** As the Head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, he has every right to visit the Minister’s office; after his fourth visit in as many hours, though, she corners him to demand whether he never learned the spell for sending memos, and he’s put in the awkward position of deciding between looking magically ignorant or admitting that he’s only inventing excuses to see her.

**3\. Crack  
** “I think,” she says, evenly, “we could do without the deadly ninja kittens,” and Ben sighs the sigh of a tragically misunderstood man.

**4\. Future Fic  
** Once they’ve won—and they do win, decisively—she puts in leave requests for both of them, packs a bag, and whisks him away for three weeks of privacy without waiting for approval (or even his agreement, not that she wouldn’t have gotten it).

**5\. First Time  
** Ben is careful and methodical, making note of what works for her and what doesn’t; there’s a distance to him she doesn’t love, and only at the end of the night, when he puts what he’s learned together so spectacularly that she literally blacks out from pleasure, does she understand why (though she still makes him pay for it).

**6\. Fluff  
** She’s spent all day running around putting out metaphorical fires (while he started real ones); he rubs her feet, makes her laugh with stories of mishaps in the field, and then cooks her favorite meal while she sits at the counter and basks.

**7\. Humor  
** “There’s a totally reasonable explanation for this,” Jason promises; Ben stands silently by, dripping neon paint and body glitter and radiating a calm dignity that doesn’t crack, even when she has to leave the room to laugh.

**8\. Hurt/Comfort  
** She stays curled beside him in his hospital bed, terrorizing doctors and nurses and hardened specialist visitors alike; he holds onto her as well as he can—not very, not with how many broken bones he has—and smiles as she strokes his hair.

**9\. Smut  
** He’s always prided himself on his control, but Evie gets to him in a way no one else ever has; he lasts three hours watching her walk around in that skirt before he pulls her into a closet, rucks it up around her hips, and pays her back in spades for the distraction.

**10\. UST  
** He gives his report shirtless solely because his shirt was sacrificed for bandages in the field, and that’s the story he’s sticking to; it’s got nothing at all to do with the way Evie’s eyes drift to him, again and again, over the course of the meeting.

 

 

 

**Jemma/Will**

**1\. Angst  
** Guilt eats away at her, day by day—Will can’t shower, Will doesn’t have strawberries, no one is bringing flowers to Will—and it grows magnitudes worse when she learns that while she was relearning life on Earth and mourning his absence, he was already dead.

**2\. AU  
** Knowing he’s safe—that her team will take care of him—soothes her worry and lifts her heart, but it does nothing to keep her warm at night; the planet is cold and empty, and a return to the isolation of her first few weeks is made worse by the knowledge of what life here is like with someone to love.

**3\. Crack  
** “Okay, but,” he looks helplessly between her and the others, “ _why_  does your team have a fully-choreographed ‘welcome back from the hell planet’ song?”

**4\. Future Fic  
** They find him wandering the English countryside, absorbed in flowers and birds and grass, and although Jemma is too busy crying and hugging him to ask about the whole killed-by-It thing, the rest of the team is not; Will’s disgust that It was walking around wearing his face is only matched by Fitz’s embarrassment over taking It at Its word.

**5\. First Time  
** She’s still crying, a little; he will never, ever admit that he is, too.

**6\. Fluff  
** He declares Netflix _genius_ , which is less to do with the ability to instantly stream fourteen years of missed movies and more to do with the excuse to spend hours curled up with Jemma in their room without interruption; apparently, her team takes pop culture lessons _very_  seriously, and leaves them to it.

**7\. Humor  
** After the fifteenth person threatens his life/soul/manhood if his treatment of Jemma should ever prove unsatisfactory, Will starts asking questions; it turns out Director Coulson has offered bonuses to everyone who helps put the fear of God into him.

**8\. Hurt/Comfort  
** Of all the reunions he imagined—and he imagined a _lot_ —he never pictured making it back to Earth to find Jemma bleeding and broken; they share a hospital room at the Playground, and no one says anything when Will pushes his bed next to hers and lowers the bars between them.

**9\. Smut  
** They have to relearn how to be quiet during sex, or else risk mortification in the form of her team’s teasing; having an entire planet to themselves spoiled them, but inventing ways to muffle each other’s cries isn’t without rewards.

**10\. UST  
** Bobbi insists on quarantining Will upon his return, and Coulson (somewhat apologetically) puts guards on Jemma to ensure she doesn’t break it; the longing and tension between Jemma and Will, even with some very thick glass separating them, is such that more than one of those guards ends up blushing.

 

 

 

**Jemma/Rumlow**

**1\. Angst  
** She nearly escapes, but hesitates for a fraction of a second when she recognizes him, and that’s all it takes; he kisses her in apology before handing her over to HYDRA to do what they will.

**2\. AU  
** When SHIELD assigns Jemma a bodyguard, she complains vociferously—it was just a tiny kidnapping! she was hardly in any danger at all!—until she lays eyes on him; after that, she declares a bodyguard an  _excellent_  idea, and inquires as to whether he’s allowed to check her bedroom for hidden dangers.

**3\. Crack  
** As far as interrogation strategies go, “tell me and I’ll kiss you” is fairly unorthodox; but, as she unashamedly points out to Coulson, it works very, very well.

**4\. Future Fic  
** Learning that she’s pregnant shifts  _both_  of their loyalties; she walks away from SHIELD without a second thought, and he only delays long enough to fake his death for HYDRA’s benefit before following.

**5\. First Time  
** She’s never slept with someone in such excellent physical condition, and she spends hours exploring the lines of his body with her fingers and then her tongue; it would go faster if he didn’t keep rolling her under him to ‘thank’ her for her dedication.

**6\. Fluff  
** Instead of flowers, he brings her specimens of rare plants from around the world; putting up with the rest of STRIKE’s griping about detours is worth it for the way her face lights up.

**7\. Humor  
** Her superior officers do _not_  accept “my boyfriend decided it was a good day to break his record for how many times he could bring me to orgasm in a single encounter” as an excuse for missing work; Jemma suspects the majority of the disciplinary action she faces is born of envy.

**8\. Hurt/Comfort  
** They land at the Sandbox to find Brock waiting for them; after a short “Ward called me” offered as explanation, he whisks her away to a private room and holds her until her shaking stops, reassuring her of her safety with nothing more than his presence and his love.

**9\. Smut  
** As an experiment, she mentions in passing getting coffee with her ex; six hours later, so oversensitive that the slightest brush of his fingers is enough to make her sob, she deems the experiment a smashing success.

**10\. UST  
** The Quinjet is so crowded with rescuers and the rescued that there’s barely space to breathe; she’s forced to sit thigh to thigh with the handsome specialist in charge, and spends the whole flight home reassuring herself that her heartbeat isn’t _really_  loud enough for him to hear.


	37. ten sentence collection two

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Over on tumblr, I did a series of ten one-sentence fics for a variety of ships. This chapter contains Jemma/Rumlow/Ward, Jemma/Kara, and Grant/Jemma.

**Jemma/Rumlow/Ward**

**1\. Angst  
** HYDRA saves Jemma and Fitz—the last survivors—from Gonzales’ false SHIELD, and Brock welcomes Jemma back with open arms; heartsick and furious over the losses she’s suffered, she offers no protest when Ward follows her to Brock’s bed, nor when he kisses her and promises vengeance for their common dead.

**2\. AU  
** SHIELD decides to assign all of its people romantic partners in order to reduce the risk of seduction by enemy agents; Jemma is infuriated and horrified by the presumption, though her anger is dimmed by bemusement when she learns she’s been assigned not one, but _two_  lovers. 

**3\. Crack  
** “Well,” Jemma says, staring at the aerial news coverage of the latest destroyed HYDRA base, the ruins of which have been artfully arranged into the words WE’RE SORRY, “at least they’re aware they’re in the wrong.”

**4\. Future Fic  
** Her conscience has been worn away like old stone at the bottom of a river; she coats Brock and Grant’s blades in a deadly poison and accepts their gratitude with a smile, never once wondering who might suffer for her latest creation.

**5\. First Time  
** Jemma does have her limits, and she thought a threesome beyond them; it turns out, however, that two highly skilled, highly motivated men are better than one, and somewhere between the mouth that catches her screams and the mouth that causes them, she forgets to judge herself for this indulgence.

**6\. Fluff  
** Grant has known but not _loved_  her longer than Brock has, and they are equally and distinctively petulant about it; still, their smiles when she laughs at their petty jealousies are likewise equally and distinctively fond, and so she tolerates it with good grace.

**7\. Humor  
** In Jemma’s defense, black mambas are magnificent and fascinating and even useful; how was she to know Brock and Grant would react so poorly to finding a tank full of them on the kitchen table?

**8\. Hurt/Comfort  
** When Grant comes home with a limp and a broken arm, Jemma cuddles into his uninjured side and makes worried noises; Brock’s concern is quieter, but no less real, and his comfort comes in the form of the broken corpse of the man who sent Grant into enemy territory with horribly false intel.

**9\. Smut  
** Sometimes it’s a competition between Grant and Brock—one sitting back and watching while the other drives her into incoherence, then taking over to see if he can do better—and other times, it’s a collaboration; either way, Jemma wins.

**10\. UST  
** Brock’s concussion is severe enough that he has been explicitly forbidden from sexual activity; he sits between Grant and Jemma on the couch, one tracing patterns on his thigh and the other lightly massaging the back of his neck, and wonders what he ever did to deserve this.

 

 

 

**Jemma/Kara**

**1\. Angst  
** Four months into their relationship, when Jemma learns that Kara is brainwashed and was  _ordered_  to her bed, she barely makes it to the bathroom before she’s violently ill; after, she swears bloody, eternal vengeance on HYDRA and promises herself she’ll get Kara out the very first chance she gets, cover be damned.

**2\. AU  
** The bullet Ward takes to the shoulder the night Coulson is kidnapped requires months of physical therapy and renders him unfit for active duty; his replacement, one Kara Lynn Palamas, has a smile bright enough to make Jemma forget her own name mid-introduction.

**3\. Crack  
** The kiss was a last-ditch attempt to distract Agent 33 from _killing_  her; Jemma certainly wasn’t expecting it to break the poor woman’s brainwashing.

**4\. Future Fic  
** Ward cares about Kara and remains one of the most important people in her life, despite the end of their relationship; Jemma tolerates him for Kara’s sake, and though she’s slightly horrified when she realizes her barely concealed spite has somehow become fond banter, Kara’s smile makes it all worth it.

**5\. First Time  
** They’re aware of each other’s wounds more than their own, and it makes them both tentative; slow and soft, luckily, is exactly what they need.

**6\. Fluff  
** “No, really,” Kara insists, holding up the puppy, “it’s right there in the programming, I’m not allowed to not have a dog,” and Jemma is so relieved that Kara has healed enough to _joke_  about the terrible atrocity that was committed against her, she can’t bring herself to protest.

**7\. Humor  
** “Are there _supposed_ to be screws left over?” Kara asks, looking at the handful she’s holding; in answer, the bed collapses with what Jemma will swear is a _taunting_  crash.

**8\. Hurt/Comfort  
** Sympathy for Kara is unbelievably lacking among the team; Jemma swears at them all, follows her into Vault C, and dares anyone to say _anything_  when she spends the night wiping away Kara’s tears.

**9\. Smut  
** Control was taken from Kara for far too long, and so she clings determinedly to it now; Jemma begs prettily and desperately and learns very quickly that the best way to get what she wants is to intersperse her pleas with _I love you_ —though full phrases are difficult when Kara so expertly drives her to incoherence.

**10\. UST  
** Jemma is a professional and Agent Palamas is wounded and this is _not_  the first time she’s had an attractive patient shirtless in her lab; as such, there is no reason why her mouth should be so dry or her cheeks so hot, and yet…

 

 

 

**Grant/Jemma**

**1\. Angst  
** If a man she once loved and welcomed into her bed can torture her for information, the least she can do is make it as difficult as possible for him to get it; spite sustains her where her broken heart would have her crumble and surrender.

**2\. AU  
** Pain blooms strong and unbearable in his chest, interrupting his words about brainwashing, and once he catches his breath, he strips off his shirt to find that the name _Jemma Simmons_ has written itself across his heart; his delighted “Well, what do you know?” is drowned out by the sound of Skye fleeing up the stairs, shouting for Coulson, so there’s no need to hide his smile.

**3\. Crack  
** “I don’t know about you,” Jemma says, the fifth time Coulson sends her to Ward to negotiate for the release of a hostage (another mint-condition Cap comic), “but I’m beginning to find this a touch embarrassing.”

**4\. Future Fic  
** If Grant had ever given it any thought, he would’ve assumed Jemma would try to talk him down in this situation; he’s delighted to find, instead, that she’s just as furious and _just_  as willing as he is to murder the little bastard that broke their daughter’s heart.

**5\. First Time  
** Habit has her calling him _Ward_  in the throes of passion, and he, though understanding, considers it unacceptable, and so he holds her on the edge for as long as it takes for her to realize her mistake and scream _Grant_  instead.

**6\. Fluff  
** Science involves a great deal of waiting, and Jemma’s new relationship offers the perfect way to fill the empty seconds; she sets her experiment of the day to run, notes the time, and then lounges appealingly against the lab doors until Grant, laughing, abandons his work-out in favor of snogging her.

**7\. Humor  
** Ward has a surprising and very well-hidden weakness for bad puns, and the first time Jemma makes him laugh with one in front of the others, Skye is so shocked she actually drops her ICER, which it goes off when it hits the floor and, in some twist of fate, catches Fitz right between the eyes; explaining it to May and Coulson is not fun, and the four of them never, ever live that day down.

**8\. Hurt/Comfort  
** Her husband was shot four times and left for dead by one of her best friends; he needs medical care, but _she’s_  the one in need of comfort, and he does his best to provide it—through a haze of very strong painkillers—while she sobs.

**9\. Smut  
** She’s complained often about his smart mouth, and nothing delights him more than using it to drive her insane—than having her bucking into it, begging and pleading and squirming, wanting  _moremoremore_ ; after years of her hating him, there’s nothing better than this.

**10\. UST  
** The new Ward—the _real_  Ward—is so different from the old as to be laughable, but one thing that hasn’t changed is the desire he so easily sparks in her gut; she will never, ever, _ever_  let him touch her, but that doesn’t stop her subconscious from tormenting her with dreams of how lovely it would be—nor her conscious mind from reminding her of those dreams every time she lays eyes on him.


	38. ten sentence collection three

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Over on tumblr, I did a series of ten one-sentence fics for a variety of ships. This chapter contains Skye/Trip, Jemma/Grant/May, and Jemma/Skye/Ward.

**Skye/Trip**

**1\. Angst  
** She survived, Raina survived, he didn’t; that’s not nearly all there is to say, but it’s all she _can_  say for hours and hours afterwards.

**2\. AU  
** She’s halfway to the temple and he’s halfway through removing all the bombs when they literally run right into each other, and he’s in such terrible shape that she immediately forgets about Raina and drags him back up out of the city, fussing the whole way.

**3\. Crack  
** “I’ll give you a cookie,” she offers, hopelessly, and the little Inhuman girl who can bring back the dead beams, says, “Deal!” and claps her hands; Trip appears in a shower of sparks, and Skye is so busy gaping that she doesn’t even notice when the little girl steals the whole freaking cookie jar.

**4\. Future Fic  
** “We are _not_  naming our daughter Monkey, I don’t _care_  what kind of bet you made with Fitz—”

**5\. First Time  
** He touches her like she’s precious, like she’s _fragile_ , but somehow it’s not creepy at all; she feels okay with him in a way she’s never felt with any other guy, and maybe it’s not the most _romantic_  thing to say at a time like this, but he doesn’t complain—just smiles like he understands how important it is, and she falls that much more in love.

**6\. Fluff  
** Their first spar turns into a wrestling match that turns into a tickle fight; May walks in on them collapsed on the mat, giggling breathlessly, and Trip’s stint as her SO is over just as soon as it began.

**7\. Humor  
** Trip is quietly smug over the hickey he leaves, high on her neck where she can’t _possibly_  hide it without either a ton of make-up or a strategically placed and completely unseasonable scarf; the last laugh is hers, though, because he doesn’t notice the _property of Skye_  she wrote in neon pen on the back of his neck while he was napping, so he doesn’t even know to hide it. 

**8\. Hurt/Comfort  
** She’s spent her whole life dreaming of her father, and it turns out he’s just one more monster to haunt her nightmares; Trip hugs her close and makes promises she knows he’ll never be able to keep, but just hearing them is enough to settle some of the awful churning in her stomach.

**9\. Smut  
** There are days when Skye just wants to be _fucked_ , to forget everything but the taste of his mouth and the heat of his skin and the feel of him inside her; luckily, Trip’s just as amazing as that as he is at slow and gentle.

**10\. UST  
** Really, does he _have_  to take his shirt off to work out _every single time_?

 

 

 

**Jemma/Grant/May**

**1\. Angst  
** Melinda wasn’t there when Jemma learned that Grant was a traitor, and—as much as she hates it, as guilty as she feels—has always been privately, shamefully grateful that she didn’t have to see her expression at that moment of awful realization; she’s willing to bet, though, that it was a lot like the look that flickers over her face when Melinda tells her she’s joined Gonzales’ council.

**2\. AU  
** The fight they have with Jemma before she leaves to visit her parents is as horrible as it is confusing, coming out of left field as it does; it’s weeks before Melinda manages to pry the truth out of Coulson, that Jemma has gone undercover at HYDRA and picked the fight to avoid awkward questions from them—which is, as Grant says loudly, _the dumbest fucking thing he’s ever heard_ , and the entire base is treated to the sound of Melinda raising her voice in agreement.

**3\. Crack  
** Grant is HYDRA for all of ten minutes; then, Jemma tells him they’re over and he’s never going to touch her _or_  Melinda ever again, and he sees the error of his ways very, very quickly.

**4\. Future Fic  
** Grant’s fingers shake as he traces the lines of the scars his torture left on Jemma; Melinda watches, blank-faced, and he knows that no matter what he says or does—no matter what _Jemma_  says or does—Melinda will never, ever forgive him for the hurt he’s caused the woman they both love.

**5\. First Time  
** It’s awkward, a little, because Grant and Melinda have been together for a while and know each other in a way Jemma doesn’t know either of them; still, they’re very eager to learn her body, and she forgets to be self-conscious sometime around the third orgasm.

**6\. Fluff  
** Grant and Melinda don’t actually have much to do while the team’s off mission; Jemma has her science, but there’s only so much sparring and working out the two of them can do before they run the risk of exhaustion…so obviously the only thing for it is to kidnap Jemma from her lab and force her to spend their free hours with them.

**7\. Humor  
** Grant literally begs to be the one to tell Skye about their relationship; he’s sure the look on her face will make all the hours of aggravation he’s experienced trying to train her worth it (and he’s absolutely right).

**8\. Hurt/Comfort  
** When Jemma’s life is threatened, Melinda and Grant need reassurance just as badly as she does; the two of them trust each other to be able to protect themselves (and her), but Jemma is untrained and horribly, horribly fragile—there are too many ways they can lose her, and they’re reminded of it far too frequently.

**9\. Smut  
** Jemma squirms—not to fight Melinda’s hold, but to feel it tighten, to be reassured of it—and Grant laughs, keeping his fingers a few careful inches from where she’s desperate to feel them; she doesn’t know what she did to deserve such torment, but she sincerely hopes they tell her so she can do it again sometime.

**10\. UST  
** They are strictly professional on the Bus, and that’s that—no matter _how_ often May does Tai Chi in tight fitting clothes or Grant ends up shirtless for no real reason or Jemma wears that pink shirt that just _begs_  to be torn off of her.

 

 

 

**Jemma/Skye/Ward**

**1\. Angst  
** Grant is in the basement reaching new levels of creepdom and Skye, unlike Jemma, doesn’t have parents to run home to; stung by abandonment, she leaves Jemma increasingly angry and hurtful voicemails and, once she finds out where she actually _is_  (risking her life in HYDRA every day, surrounded by the enemy, while Skye’s been whining about talking to a guy behind a barrier), feels like the worst person alive.

**2\. AU  
** “Can we keep her?” Skye asks, and while this whole Bonnie and Clyde thing doesn’t really work as well with a third…well, he can’t deny Jemma’s worth keeping.

**3\. Crack  
** “Okay, I’m sorry, I’m really gonna need some backstory on how you got us named Queens of a country we’ve never set foot in.”

**4\. Future Fic  
** The ground shakes beneath them and Grant grins through bloody teeth; he doesn’t know if that was Daisy’s power or one of Jemma’s bombs, but he _does_  know that HYDRA’s about to see the error of its ways.

**5\. First Time  
** Skye makes a joke about Grant’s endurance, whether he can really handle two girls—”especially super sexy ones like us”—at once, and it turns out to be the best thing she’s _ever_  said; he’s got something to prove, and does so _thoroughly_.

**6\. Fluff  
** Grant is deeply asleep, having surrendered to four nights’ worth of exhaustion, and though Jemma and Skye are wide awake, they’re loathe to leave him, and so spend hours lying on either side of him, keeping themselves entertained in quiet activity; Grant’s abs, it turns out, make an excellent table for a board game.

**7\. Humor  
** “Yes, fine, I admit that I lured you into a trap, but before you start shouting, I want it made clearthat the feathers were _Skye’s_ idea.”

**8\. Hurt/Comfort  
** Skye doesn’t know whether she or Jemma is shaking harder, but she guesses it doesn’t matter; they cling to each other and to Grant and let his whispered promises of protection sink into their skin.

**9\. Smut  
** Skye gets lost in the strength of Grant’s hands and the taste of Jemma’s skin, Jemma’s soft hair and Grant’s warm mouth, and sensation melts into sensation until all she knows is _more_  and _yes_  and _there_.

**10\. UST  
** Skye is in a sports bra and Grant is shirtless and they’re right in front of her lab, which is utterly unfair; an hour in, Jemma undoes the top three buttons on her shirt and makes a point of leaning over the table nearest the windows—an effort rewarded when Skye drops her water bottle and Grant ends training a full twenty minutes early.


	39. ten sentence collection four

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Over on tumblr, I did a series of ten one-sentence fics for a variety of ships. This chapter contains Jemma/Steve, Jemma/Hive, and Skye/Ward.

**Jemma/Steve**

**1\. Angst  
** She is soft and fragile and utterly unenhanced; it never occurred to her that _she_  might be the one left alone after _he_ , with all of his superhuman strength, dies in the field.

**2\. AU  
** “My name is Jemma Simmons, and I need your help to rescue my commanding officer—who I believe is a friend of yours.”

**3\. Crack  
** Tony pushes her too far and she picks up the nearest object to shake at him in emphasis as she shouts; it’s Mjolnir, and Steve laughs and laughs while Tony sputters in wounded dignity.

**4\. Future Fic  
** His hands are steady when he lifts their daughter from her bassinet, but every inch of him is radiating terror; Jemma, too, is frightened, and finds comfort in this common ground.

**5\. First Time  
** He’s careful of his strength—so very careful—and every touch is feather light; she’s half mad with desire before she’s even fully naked and, hours later, will deem the frustration _absolutely_  worth it (once, that is, she regains her ability to form words).

**6\. Fluff  
** There is nothing more American than Steve Rogers playing with a golden retriever puppy, and though Jemma is English (and proud of it), she’s certainly not immune to the sight.

**7\. Humor  
** The look on his face when she admits to having shared a drunken kiss with Natasha at a SHIELD Christmas party four years ago is worth the embarrassment of recalling it.

**8\. Hurt/Comfort  
** He comes home without Bucky for the dozenth or hundredth or thousandth time, and she can read the defeat in his posture; she climbs into bed with him and holds him while he shakes, pretending they don’t both know the search grows more hopeless by the day.

**9\. Smut  
** She grips his hair, arching into his mouth and swearing between pleas for more; he could do this for hours, enjoying the taste of her and the sound of her voice breaking on his name.

**10\. UST  
** Don’t they have actual, qualified medics—medics who aren’t pretty and kind, whose hands won’t distract him from his pain in a completely inappropriate way?

 

 

 

**Jemma/Hive**

**1\. Angst  
** She is trapped and at his mercy, not even afforded privacy within her own mind, and has no hope of rescue, and yet, of all things, the worst part of her imprisonment is her own weakness in the face of his affection.

**2\. AU  
** He finds her three days after she arrives on the planet, brings her to his crumbling castle and gives her food and water; he is attentive and kind, apologetic that another has been sentenced to this prison, and smiles in a disbelieving sort of hope when she swears to find them _both_  a way home.

**3\. Crack  
** As it happens, it is only HYDRA that dreams of world domination; Hive is much more interested in Netflix and pizza and the tiny scraps of fabric Jemma calls a bikini.

**4\. Future Fic  
** The world burns, and SHIELD with it; Jemma is left alive and begs for death, while her friends die silently, too proud to beg for life, and in the end, she has no one but the monster that killed them.

**5\. First Time  
** Hundreds of lives’ worth of memories are not the same as experiencing something for oneself; after thousands of years of enforced celibacy, Hive is eager to reacquaint himself with pleasure, and takes his time enjoying Jemma’s.

**6\. Fluff  
** There were no animals to speak of on the planet (save the tentacle monsters), and Hive is transfixed by the variety of wildlife to be found on Earth; cliche would assign a cat to sit on Hive's lap during meetings, but there’s a whole shelter’s worth of pets that call his office home, and his smile forces Jemma to forgive the chaos.

**7\. Humor  
** “I believe you’re dangerous enough _without_  a lightsaber, don’t you?”

**8\. Hurt/Comfort  
** She’s reminded, sometimes, that he terrorized Will for fourteen years and eventually killed him; he talks her down patiently with pretty words and soft touches, and the warmth of his arms chases away the chill of guilt.

**9\. Smut  
** Jemma belongs to _him_  and him alone, so he scatters bruises across her breasts as she begs for more, traces his hundreds of names over her skin, holds her on the edge until acknowledges his claim—she belongs to him, and she damn well knows it.

**10\. UST  
** Hive’s eyes follow her around every room, burning through her wherever she goes; she disdains his attention, snubs him at every turn, and hopes with all her heart that she will succeed in escaping before she surrenders to the itch in her skin that urges her to do more than simply look at him.

 

 

 

**Skye/Ward**

**1\. Angst  
** In his own (twisted) way, the things he’s done to hurt her have been for good reasons, and maybe she could excuse that (maybe she _wants_  to); but his wrongs against the people she loves—Simmons, Fitz, May, Bobbi (oh _god_ , did he hurt Bobbi)—just keep stacking up, and that she _can’t_  forgive. 

**2\. AU  
** Most of the Rising Tide’s meet ups tend to happen in the digital world, what with them being hacktivists and all, but every once in a while a tiny group of them gets together in person; it happens again the day after Skye breaks up with Miles, and she immediately zeroes in on the new guy—quiet and kinda stiff, but freaking _gorgeous;_ she wants to climb him like a tree (and totally could, he’s ginormous)—as the perfect rebound.

**3\. Crack  
** Skye is starting to get a little suspicious about how many of her and Ward’s training sessions end with a trip to the nearest animal shelter in search of undercover enemy agents.

**4\. Future Fic  
** Of the two of them, she really would’ve expected _him_  to be the one to freak when she realizes she’s pregnant; instead, he hugs her close and patiently counters her every (hysterical) reason she’s gonna be a terrible mother, and even though she’s blubbering all over him, his quietly excited smile never wavers.

**5\. First Time  
** There’s too much between them for this to be simple or easy, but Grant kisses her like she’s the only person in the world, like she _matters_ , and she thinks maybe it’s okay that it’s not easy—maybe that makes it better.

**6\. Fluff  
** The first time she manages to actually, seriously disarm him—like, for _real_  disarm him, not him just letting her do it for the sake of practice—she demands ice cream as a reward; he rolls his eyes and grumbles all the way to the parlor (because she is a ninja _badass_ , okay, she deserves _real_  ice cream, not just the stuff from the carton that got shoved to the back of the Bus’ freezer six weeks ago), but there are reflective surfaces all over the place and she _totally_  catches him smiling while she deliberates over flavors.

**7\. Humor  
** Of all the ways he’s different now, the easy, lighthearted conversation throws her the most; he’s not embarrassed to answer her question about her new uniform with, “It’ll look better on my floor” or to match her teasing with banter of his own, and she kind of loves it.

**8\. Hurt/Comfort  
** “You’ve been crying for twenty minutes and I haven’t killed _anyone_  over it; some appreciation for my growth as a human being would be nice,” he complains, feigning petulance, and her laughter (guilty, totally guilty laughter, this is _not_  funny) chases away her tears.

**9\. Smut  
** She kisses her way down his torso, lingering over his abs—god, she used to dream about this, he’s  _so_  built and she’s wanted for _years_  to trace these contours with her tongue—and enjoying the way he squirms; he’s not used to not being in control, but he’ll give it up for her, and _that’s_  nearly as much of a rush as the little sounds he’s making while he tries not to beg.

**10\. UST  
** Sparring is the _worst_  part of training; he pins her to the mat and all she wants is to arch up into him or hook her leg around his waist and grind her hips into his or just kiss the smug look off his face or  _something_ …and one of these days, she’s not gonna be able to stop herself.


	40. quiet (Jemma/Rumlow)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Over on tumblr, I did a series of five minute drabbles, in which my followers gave me a word and a ship, and I wrote a drabble in five minutes. (or ten. or fifteen, once or twice.) This one gets its own chapter because it's Jemma/Rumlow.
> 
> safelycapricious asked: "Quiet for five minutes and Rumlow/Jemma please!"

 

 

She doesn’t say anything when they bring her in. She doesn’t even make eye contact. She keeps her eyes on the wall while they strap her to a chair and then, once the interrogator takes the chair across from hers, focuses on the table.

“Miss Simmons,” he says, gravely, “do you understand your situation?”

Jemma breathes in and then out, slow and deep. The shackles on her wrists are uncomfortable, but not painful. Her cheek is throbbing, skin hot, but she’s had worse than a little bruise.

She’s fine. She’s absolutely fine.

“You’ll save yourself a lot of trouble cooperating now,” he warns. “Sooner or later, you _will_  comply. Wouldn’t you rather spare yourself unnecessary suffering?”

She smiles at the table. She won’t be the one suffering.

Not this time.

“Miss Simmons?” the man prompts.

She wonders how long this is going to take—but ah, there it is. An explosion rocks the room, alarms begin to blare, and the HYDRA agent across from her shoots to his feet.

“What—?” he starts, but the door blows inward and there’s a bullet in his forehead before he can finish his question.

“There you are,” Brock says, voice light, though his eyes are dark as they flicker over her. “I’ve been looking everywhere for you, sweetheart.”

She smiles up at him and waits, patiently, as he kneels before her to undo her restraints. Ankles first, then wrists, and finally she’s free to open her mouth and remove the plastic-sealed sim card tucked behind her teeth.

“I hope this was worth it,” he says, accepting it with a frown.

She kisses it away at once. “You have no idea.”


	41. five minute drabble collection one

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Over on tumblr, I did a series of five minute drabbles, in which my followers gave me a word and a ship, and I wrote a drabble in five minutes. (or ten. or fifteen, once or twice.)

_thestarfishdancer asked: For FIVE MINUTE DRABBLES, biospecialist and "breath" please and thank you!_

Jemma collapses next to Ward, out of breath, and is met with a highly suspicious look. 

“Do I wanna know what you’ve been up to?” he asks, already resigned.

“Probably not,” she admits cheerfully. “But if anyone asks, I’ve been here the whole time.”

He sighs, though she thinks she spots a smile pulling at the corner of his mouth. Of all the team, he protested this assignment the loudest, and over the course of it has displayed heretofore unseen levels of patience with her and Skye’s various shenanigans. From a certain angle, in fact, he could almost be said to be encouraging them.

“Just tell me one thing,” he says, lowering his voice. “Is that creep Baylor gonna suffer for it?”

Her mood dims, a little, at the mention, and she shakes her head.

“Unfortunately, no,” she says. “I’ve yet to devise any sort of effective weapon to use against _him_.”

_Weapon_  is a strong word, of course. Being forced into providing security for the private research company owned by the man who broke her heart is unpleasant, but it’s not enough to drive her to violence. She’s simply engaged in a number of childish pranks…none of which have been targeted at him. Yet.

She’s a _genius_ , for goodness’ sake, she’ll think of something eventually.

“Speak of the devil,” she murmurs, unhappily, as she spots him entering the lobby from the farthest door. Likely he’s come to yell at Ward about professionalism again; he insists on acting like he and Jemma are old friends—as if he didn’t do what he did to her—and seems determined to blame all of her mischief on Ward, no matter how great the evidence against her.

“Right,” Ward says, setting his book aside. “That’s enough of that.”

“En—” Enough of _what_ , she means to ask, but hasn’t the chance; his lips cover hers in a kiss that chases every thought right out of her head, and she forgets everything that isn’t the heat of his mouth and the slide of his fingers through her hair.

 

 

 

_safelycapricious asked: Lost for the five minute drabble biospec_

Jemma swears. Extensively.

Ward—sitting behind a _desk_ , of all things, this is one of the most surreal sights she’s ever seen—raises his eyebrows, leaning back in his chair. 

“Nice to see you, too, Simmons,” he says. “Is—yep, there we go. Take it easy, boys,” he adds, as the guards who have finally caught up to her seize her (painfully) by the arms. “She’s an old friend; I don’t mind taking a minute to catch up.”

“Sir,” the guard she managed to hit earlier (he’s a head wound that’s still bleeding) pants, “she destroyed the fifth floor labs.”

“Ah. I wondered what the alarms were about,” Ward muses. “Don’t worry, she’s more than capable of fixing everything she broke…and she will.”

“No,” Jemma says, “she _won’t_.”

He smiles and waves towards a chair, to which she is quickly dragged. She seats herself before she can be forced, earning a smile from Ward and suspicious glares from the guards.

“Why don’t you give us a minute,” Ward says. “Markham should be landing soon, and he’s gonna want an update on our little security issue.”

The guard who isn’t bleeding pales dramatically, but offers no protest; both of them respond with resigned “Yes, sir”s and disappear out the door in short order.

“So,” Ward says, drawing Jemma’s attention away from the door (and her calculations regarding her chances of making it _out_  said door before he can stop her; in short, not good). “Assassination attempt?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Is this another assassination attempt?” he asks. “You’re not exactly the obvious choice for one, but…”

“No,” she snaps, “of course not.”

“Then you came to my office after destroying my labs _because_ …?” he invites.

She grimaces before she can stop herself and then instantly smooths the expression away. She is _not_  about to admit to him that she got _lost_  on her way out of his bloody labyrinthine building.

“Maybe I just missed you,” she says evenly.

Ward smiles slowly. “Well. I can certainly work with that.”

The once-over he gives her speaks volumes about what kind of _work_  he intends. She’s certain he doesn’t actually believe that she missed him, and equally certain that he’ll play along, drawing out the pretense, for as long as it amuses him. 

The only question is, is _she_  willing to play along? Will she accept the invitation implicit in his gaze for the sake of her pride?

“I’m sure you can,” she murmurs, crossing her legs, and watches his smile widen.

 

 

 

_Anonymous asked: Ortilla and Markham (not necessarily as a couple, unless you have an idea for that)- Bet_

“Did I hear that right?” Ortilla hisses, falling into step with Ben as they leave the conference room. “The Director wants us to _kidnap_  his ex-girlfriend?”

The word Ward used was _relocate_ , actually, but essentially… “Yes.”

“Man.” Ortilla grimaces at the passing Hicks, who shrugs helplessly. “How the hell are we supposed to nab a SHIELD agent without hurting her?”

That _will_  be the trick, he’s gotta admit. It was made very, very clear that Jemma Simmons is to be delivered without a scratch on her, or else. And they’ve all been working with Ward—hell, with HYDRA—long enough to know what ‘or else’ means.

Happily, it’s not actually Ben’s problem. “I’m sure you’ll think of something.”

“Oh, come on,” Ortilla whines. “You’re the strategy guy! Give us a damn strategy.”

He sighs. Ortilla’s a more than competent agent, but his idea of strategy generally starts and ends with ‘busting heads’. That’s not gonna work here.

He turns what he knows about Simmons over in his mind. Recruited to SHIELD as a teenager, successfully infiltrated Whitehall’s HYDRA and managed to escape ( _with_  classified data) unscathed after being burned, apparently nearly killed Ward less than a year ago…

She’s not the type to go down without a fight, no matter how outnumbered she is. A physical show of force won’t be enough to induce surrender.

But she’s a SHIELD agent, so….

“Go after her in public,” he says. “Isolate her from any other SHIELD agents, then use a civilian as a hostage. Promise to let them go if she comes quietly.” And as a woman who’d go toe to toe with Ward has to have nerves of steel… “Tranq her—lightly—once you’ve got her restrained.”

“Is that all?” Ortilla asks. “ _I_  coulda thought of that.”

“Sure you could’ve.”

“Let’s hope it works,” he adds, taking a nervous glance over his shoulder. “Ward seems pretty touchy about this.”

Touchy’s one word for it. _Violent_  is another. Jenkins made the mistake of assuming Ward would want a brainwashing room prepared and paid dearly for it.

“Jenkins’ll live,” is all Ben says aloud.

“More’s the pity,” Ortilla mutters and then, bizarrely, asks, “So what d’you think of his chances?”

“Whose? Jenkins’?”

“No, Ward’s,” Ortilla corrects impatiently. “You think he can talk this chick around? Or do you think SHIELD’ll get her outta here before he manages?”

As opening moves for reconciliation go, kidnapping’s not great. But if there’s one thing Ben’s learned over the last year, it’s to never bet against Ward.

“My money’s on Ward.”

 

 

 

_Anonymous asked: Jemma/Grant for archaic_

The rescue goes well until the very end, when they reach the door to the outside to find it guarded by a large—very large; he’s both taller and broader than Ward—man brandishing a sword.

“Go back to your cell, witch,” the man spits at Jemma, and she knows a moment of hysterical amusement, because he actually sounds as though he expects her to obey.

“No, thank you,” she says. It’s difficult to sound dignified when she’s plastered to Ward’s side, two fingers hooked through one of his belt loops like a child frightened of losing a parent in a crowd, but she does her best.

She should detach herself, she knows—if he’s going to fight this man, he’ll find it easier without her in the way—but she just can’t do it. 

She doesn’t know where she is or what’s happening, not quite, but she knows she can’t let go. She _must_  hold on to Ward. Everything will be fine if she holds on to Ward.

“Sir Grant,” the guard says to Ward, “what are you doing?”

“Staging a rescue,” he replies, tone surprisingly flippant. “What does it look like?”

The guard appears honestly thrown by this response, and a brief smile flickers over Ward’s face.

“Now,” he says. “Move aside.”

“No,” the guard snaps, and then falters. “That is, I’m sorry, sir, but I can’t.”

“Move aside,” Ward repeats. “Let us through.”

“No.” The guard raises his sword, hesitant but determined. “You’re going through this door over my dead body.”

Ward pauses, then shrugs and draws his gun.

“Works for me,” he says, and shoots the guard in the face.

Jemma _eeps_ —blood and gore is splattered _all over_  the door they need to walk through, and she could happily have gone her entire life not knowing what a face looks like with a _bullet_  through it—and the arm around her shoulders tightens.

“I’m sorry,” Ward says as he tucks his gun away. “But he wasn’t gonna move, and we don’t have time for a sword fight.”

“Time,” she echoes, and a few things slot into place. “We’re…in the wrong time?”

“Something like that,” Ward says. “And we’ve gotta get you out of here before they get the chance to burn you at the stake like they keep threatening.” 

Oh, that’s right. She’s been accused of witchcraft, because….well, she doesn’t actually remember. But she’s certain she’s innocent.

“Magic isn’t real,” she mutters.

“Uh huh,” Ward says. “Come on—and keep your eyes closed. You’re not gonna wanna see what’s outside.”


	42. five minute drabble collection two

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Over on tumblr, I did a series of five minute drabbles, in which my followers gave me a word and a ship, and I wrote a drabble in five minutes. (or ten. or fifteen, once or twice.)

_Anonymous asked: Jemma- Tattoo_

“I gotta be honest, sweetheart,” Grant says as he turns her arm this way and that. “This? This hurts my feelings.”

Jemma clenches her jaw and focuses on the wall behind him, attempting to broadcast her resolve not to speak. She’s never been very good at the silent treatment—would much rather explain (at length)  _exactly_  how wrong someone is—but this seems a fine time to practice her skill in it. It’s not easy, not with his knees pressed to hers and his hand like steel around her wrist, but she’s giving it her best.

“I mean, it’s pretty,” he adds, tracing the line of the flowers blooming across her skin, “don’t get me wrong. But did you have to put it _here_?”

As a matter of fact, she did.

A soul mark can’t be removed, surgically or otherwise. Skin grafts and even amputation are useless; if the skin on which the soul mark is displayed is removed, it simply relocates itself. Which means that no matter how desperately she desired to cut Grant out of her skin (the same way she’s tried to cut him out of her heart), she couldn’t. Soul marks can’t be erased.

They can, however, be covered.

The tattoo is expansive and beautiful. It is colorful and astonishingly realistic. It took several sessions, cost no small sum, and covers her right arm from wrist to elbow.

All Jemma cares about is that it it covers the line of text that used to be written on her inner forearm, the simple  _“Need some help with that?”_  that bound her, inexorably, to Grant.

It’s still there, under her flowers. But she doesn’t have to look at it every day, and that’s enough.

Grant’s fingers come to a stop where the heavy lines of the tattoo disguise her words, and he rubs his thumb over them as though he might clear the tattoo away.

Her skin sings under his touch, the same way it always has. But she’s done her best to close her heart off from him, and if his frown is any indication, he might finally grasp it.

It’s not as satisfying as she thought it would be.

 

 

 

_Anonymous asked: Jemma/Ward- ex-boyfriend._

After three weeks away, Grant’s more than happy that Jemma is the first thing he sees when he opens their front door. He just came from a hellish debrief that followed a complete clusterfuck of a mission; his entire plan for the rest of the day involves him and Jemma and their bed (which he’s missed almost as much as he’s missed her), and he’s relieved that he won’t have to waste time dragging her away from her lab.

Then he clocks the look on her face, and suspicion edges out relief.

“Jemma?”

She startles and then spins to face him, beaming. “Grant! You’re home!”

A little of his suspicion fades—along with a _lot_  of the coiled tension in his spine—when she throws herself at him in a gleeful hug. Whatever put that look on her face, apparently it’s nothing to do with him.

“Hi,” he says, and bends to kiss her. It ends up a little more heated than he means it to (in his defense, it’s been _weeks_ ), and when she eventually shoves him away, they’re _both_  breathless.

“Someone missed me,” she says, happily, and takes one of his hands in both of hers. “Bedroom?”

It’s beyond tempting, but…he wants to know what’s up with her, first.

“In a sec,” he says. “What’s got you upset?”

She blinks up at him. “Upset?”

“You were frowning,” he says, thumbing her bottom lip, “when I walked in.”

“Oh,” she says, eyes going wide. Her gaze darts to the left, and he follows it to see a large vase of flowers on the hall table.

“Taking up flower arranging?” he guesses, eyeing the vase. He’s not exactly an expert, courses in interior decorating aside (for some reason, that comes up as a cover a _lot_ ), but it looks a little…gaudy to him. Or a _lot_.

His efforts to think of a complimentary thing to say about the arrangement are derailed when Jemma shakes her head.

“They’re a gift,” she says. “They were delivered a few minutes ago.”

Huh.

“…Someone sent you flowers?” he asks. “Who?”

He’s done it himself a couple times, usually when an op’s run long and kept him away during an anniversary, but it’s the middle of June. There’s nothing significant about June.

“My ex-boyfriend,” she says, and Grant’s eyes narrow. 

“Really.”

He only realizes his tone when Jemma gives him an alarmed look, and he quickly blanks his face.

“Your ex has terrible taste,” he says lightly. “Those flowers are horrible.”

“Yes,” she agrees, eyeing them with a frown. “I was trying to decide what to do with them when you walked in.”

“Throw them out,” he suggests, and then, casually, asks, “What are they for, anyway?”

“It’s the four year anniversary of our break-up,” she says. “It appears he’d like to make amends.”

Like hell.

That she hesitated, rather than immediately throw them out—that she needed to _decide_  what to do with the ugly flowers—tells him she’s not completely against the idea of making friends with this ex, whoever he is. Grant isn’t about to let that happen, but he can’t outright _tell_  her not to.

Physical persuasion it is, then.

“Okay,” he says, “that’s enough about flowers. You said something about the bedroom?”

“I did,” she says, smiling coyly up at him. If she thinks anything of the sudden change in subject, she doesn’t show it. “Would you care to join me?”

By the time he’s done with her, all thoughts of flowers and exes and, most importantly, _amends_ , will have been driven right out of her mind.

Then he can look into this ex of hers and decide whether he needs dealt with.


	43. Jurassic Park AU

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [For the **Movie** AU theme at Ward x Simmons Winter.]
> 
> safelycapricious asked: ""I told you those things are vicious!""

_“I told you those things are vicious.”_

The good news is, Grant just got another pay raise, which means that he is now officially making more per _minute_ than he was making per day in the army.

The bad news is, the pay raise is because yet _another_ of his colleagues got himself killed this morning. If InGen hadn’t raised the whole security force’s salaries, they’d all be halfway home by now. As it is, Grant’s still pretty tempted; he’s damn good at what he does—one of the best, even—but even he doesn’t like his chances against dinosaurs.

Seriously. _Dinosaurs_.

This island such a bad idea.

Good luck convincing any of the _brains_ of that, though.

“Oh, don’t be such a worrywart, Ward,” Jemma Simmons—the best and brightest of the aforementioned brains, and Grant’s personal favorite scientist—scolds. “This is a brand new field of science! It’s pure innovation, and you can’t expect to make progress without a few bumps and scrapes.”

She’s too busy cooing over an egg the size of her head to notice his incredulous stare.

“‘Bumps and scrapes’?” he echoes. “Eddings got _eaten_.”

That gives her pause. “He what? How did he manage _that_?”

“Fell into the velociraptor paddock,” he says, grimacing at the memory. He’s never been the squeamish type, but what happened to Eddings—ugh.

He can’t believe old man Hammond actually wants to make a _theme park_ out of this place. What a moron.

“Oh. That explains it,” Simmons says, and returns her attention to the egg. “That shouldn’t happen again, then, as long as everyone remaining has the sense not to fall into any paddocks.”

It’s such a bizarrely cold thing to hear—especially coming from a woman who spent ten minutes fussing when he got a _scratch_ (not even a real cut) while hiking through the jungle the other day—that Grant has to laugh.

“I’ll pass the word along,” he says dryly, and she nods absently.

“Do that.”

She marks something on her clipboard and then, after one last happy smile at the egg she’s been evaluating, moves along to the next incubator. He follows.

“Seriously, Simmons,” he says. “That’s the third death this _month_. This place isn’t safe.”

“Safety is your concern, not mine,” she reminds him as she taps on a slightly smaller egg. Then she frowns and taps it again. “Hmm.”

He rolls his eyes as she promptly forgets him, waving another scientist over and falling into a string of words he probably wouldn’t understand even if he _hadn’t_ slept through high school chemistry.

She’s right, though, that safety is his concern. So is his _survival_ , and he wonders, for the hundredth time, exactly why he’s risking it on an island full of monsters that’d love to make a snack out of him. The money is good, but it’s not worth his life.

As if in answer, Simmons leans over the apparently problematic egg, one hand tugging at her ponytail in thought, and lit by the incubator’s warm glow, she looks…

He sighs.

He knows exactly why he’s staying.

He just hopes this stupid crush of his doesn’t get him killed.


	44. Grant playing with Jemma's hair

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Anonymous asked: "biospecialist + ♧:One character playing with the other's hair"

Grant finds Simmons in the fourth floor labs, exactly where he expects. 

What he’s _not_  expecting is the lack of visible injury or threat. There are guards placed evenly around the room, of course, just like all of HYDRA’s other labs, but while they’re keeping an eye on her, none of them are aiming weapons or looming or holding a knife to some innocent civilian’s throat to make her cooperate.

She’s not brainwashed, either—she can’t be. He knows for a fact HYDRA already tried that trick on her back in the day, picked her up straight out of the Academy when they realized she wasn’t a suitable candidate for turning, and it didn’t take.

So. She hasn’t been tortured, she hasn’t been brainwashed, and there are no lives under immediate threat.  

Which begs the question of why, then, she’s happily sciencing away.

Well, there’s only one way to find out.   

Just as absorbed in her work here as she used to get on the Bus, she doesn’t notice him until he’s right beside her, leaning against her lab bench and examining her work space. (He recognizes the centrifuge and the microscope, and that’s about it.)

“Did you ne—Ward?”

“Hey there, Simmons,” he says, smiling pleasantly. “How’s it going?”

“Fine.” She blinks up at him, clearly thrown, and it gets a lot harder to hold on to his smile when he realizes just why she’s cooperating.

She’s been drugged. 

Her pupils are blown wide and her lips–and fingernails, when he darts a glance at them—tinged blue, which is an obvious sign of over-exposure to the compliance drugs. And sure enough, when he slides a hand into her hair to expose her neck, there’s a long line of injection marks under her left ear.

Damn it.

“I’m so glad to see you! But…how are you here?” she asks, tipping her head into his hand before he can let go. “They said you were missing. Are you hurt?”

It’s not surprising that she’s the same old Simmons. The compliance drugs don’t strip away free will the way brainwashing does, they just make people more susceptible to suggestion. HYDRA probably just doses her up and points her at the lab every morning, and her own natural curiosity—that insatiable need for answers that makes her such a great scientist—does the rest.

And his own friendly approach just now set the stage for this, for her greeting him with a smile instead of fear or anger.

“No,” he says. “I’m not hurt.”

He lets his hand fall away, and her smile dims a little.

“I’m glad,” she says, and turns back to her work. “Did you need something?”

From welcoming to dismissive, just like that. She’s enough of a fighter—and there’s enough bad blood between them—that it’ll take constant influence to keep her friendly.

Good to know.

“Actually, yeah,” he says. He moves in a little closer, resting one hand on the counter right next to her as the other toys with the ends of her hair. The tense line of her shoulders eases. “I was hoping I could borrow you for a bit.”

“Borrow me?” she asks.

“Mm.” He leaves her hair be, slides his hand over her hip instead as he tosses a wink to the watching guards. “I’ve got a real pressing problem I need your help with.”

The guards take that exactly the way he means them to; they smirk and look pointedly away, signaling that they don’t intend to interfere. They’ll let him walk Simmons—vulnerable, trusting, drugged out of her mind Simmons—right out of here so he can do whatever the hell he wants to her.

He breathes in slowly as Simmons leans back into him, tamping down on his fury. He can’t kill the guards. He wants to—fuck, does he want to—but he can’t afford to give the game away. Their complacency is exactly what he was hoping for.

If he ever gets the chance, he’ll absolutely come back here and make them pay for being so willing to see Simmons suffer. But for now…

“Will you help me?” he asks, voice low and intimate. “Please?”

“Of course,” she says easily, cold hand coming to cover his on her hip. “What do you need?”

“Take a walk with me,” he says, and she does. She walks straight out of the building with him, doesn’t once look back or ask where they’re going.

Which is good, because he doesn’t actually _know_ where they’re going. The whole reason he returned to HYDRA in the first place was because he didn’t know what else to do. John is dead and SHIELD hates him and he already got his revenge for his childhood; HYDRA was the only direction he could come up with.

He’s a little sad to lose it—he’s never done well without direction—but like hell he was just gonna leave Simmons there to be used like that.

“I’ll take care of you,” he promises as he aims them towards the crowded parking lot down the block. There’s bound to be a good getaway car there he can steal.

Simmons smiles up at him, happily trusting, and tangles their fingers. “I know you will.”


	45. Grant being nice to Jemma

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Anonymous asked: "I had the WORST encounter with a creepy guy at work today. I've read a few of your protective Grant stories to try to feel better, and I was wondering if you could just write out a few headcanons about how Ward would interact with Jemma after she gets harassed at work? It could be any situation or universe, I just want to read about Grant being nice to Jemma before heading out 'for an errand'. (Is this a weird request? I just really need a distraction)"

It has been a truly terrible day, starting with the discovery that an overnight power blip combined with the failure of the emergency generator to _ruin_  an experiment four months in progress and ending with a skin-crawling encounter with her newest colleague, and all Jemma wants is a hot bath and a very large glass of wine.

Finding Grant already home when she arrives is almost enough to drive her to tears.

He doesn’t often make it home so early, so when he does, it’s usually a treat. They’ll linger for a while in the living room, having a cuddle on the couch while they catch each other up on their days, and then, frequently, go out for a nice meal. She loves him so dearly, and never before has his presence been anything but a blessing.

But he knows her too well, and he’s bound to see every second of her terrible day on her face if she gives him the chance, and—while he will most certainly be completely sympathetic—she just can’t take that. He’s so protective of her, so quick to anger on her behalf, and she simply doesn’t have it in her to calm him down tonight.

So when he greets her with a smile and a “Hey, sweetheart,” she busies herself with locking the front door, dropping her handbag on the hall table, and kicking off her shoes.

“Hello,” she says, once she’s sure her voice will remain even. “I’m going to change.”

That said, she flees to the bedroom, closing the door behind her.

Of course, a closed door hardly represents a barrier to Grant, so she’s puzzled—and very, very grateful—when he doesn’t follow. She expects him any second as she strips out of her work clothes and lets her hair down, but the door remains happily closed.

Well. If he’s giving her the time…

A hot bath is rather out of the question, and the wine is in the kitchen (on the other side of the bedroom door, where Grant is likely lying in wait), but her skin is still crawling and she needs _something_. A shower will have to do.

And it does very well. The warm water loosens her horribly tense muscles, and the steam helps keep her head clear when she gives in to a quick cry. It’s born more of frustration than anything else, but she still feels better afterwards—and better still once she’s dried off and dressed in her most comfortable pajamas.

The bedroom door is still closed. Perhaps Grant didn’t notice anything wrong? He might not have read anything into her abrupt greeting and her closure of the bedroom door (the first time she’s ever bothered to do so). In which case, climbing straight into bed will only alert him to her state.

So, after a brief glance at the mirror—she looks exhausted and pale, but there are no signs of her crying jag—she leaves the bedroom.

Grant appears from the kitchen the moment she does so, and it’s plain as day on his face that he _has_  realized there’s something amiss. His expression is so full of love and concern that it makes her throat tight.

“Everything okay?” he asks gently.

“Oh, yes,” she says, pasting on a smile. “Just a terribly long day. I’m sorry to keep you waiting.”

“That’s okay.” His concern doesn’t ease at all, so she obviously wasn’t very convincing, but he doesn’t press—simply waits in the doorway as she approaches, then pulls her into a hug when she’s within reach. “I made you some tea.”

She clings to him gratefully, enjoying the strength in his familiar arms. He’s a dangerous man, of course, capable of no end of terrible things—a trained and licensed killer, as he himself has pointed out on more than one occasion—but he’s never once frightened her. It’s impossible to feel anything but safe in his arms.

“Thank you,” she says into his shoulder.

His hand rubs soothingly over her back. “You’re welcome.”

He doesn’t comment on her choice of attire—she usually changes into something more casual after work, but not as casual as her pajamas—or on her wet hair; he simply steers her to a stool at the breakfast bar and places a mug of her favorite tea in front of her.

“Thank you,” she says again, and breathes in the steam.

He nods, but doesn’t say anything, just leans against the bar as she sips at her tea. Like the shower, it helps tremendously, warming something inside her that she didn’t even realize had gone cold. It helps, too, to have Grant nearby—to listen to his quiet breathing and to feel his presence at her side.

She’s feeling very peaceful by the time Grant breaks the silence.

“So,” he says, “you wanna tell me what’s wrong?”

She sighs and lowers her mug to the counter, but keeps her hands wrapped around it—more to keep from fidgeting than for the warmth.

“I’m surprised you lasted this long,” she says, with an attempt at a teasing smile. “I was expecting you to burst in while I was getting undressed.”

“Oh, I was tempted,” he says, in a dry sort of tone that suggests it actually took quite a bit of self-control not to follow her, “but I figured you must’ve closed the door for a reason.” He pulls at a loose strand of her hair—a quick, playful tug that nonetheless manages to be surprisingly soothing. “Seemed like a pretty clear demand for privacy.”

“A request,” she corrects, and smiles genuinely as he rolls his eyes, “but yes. Thank you.”

He rubs her shoulder. “So? You gonna tell me why you needed it?”

“I did tell you,” she says. “Just a long day.”

He raises an unimpressed eyebrow.

“A _bad_  day,” she amends. “I just needed a moment to myself, that’s all.”

“You’ve had bad days before,” he says, searching her face. “Usually being by yourself’s the last thing you want.”

Oh, drat. That’s very true. Generally, all she wants on a bad day is time with Grant—time to be pampered and loved and, rarely, teased out of her mood.

He’s watching her expectantly. She wishes she could change the subject, brush him off with an excuse, but while he’d probably let her—well, it would be unkind. He’s still so clearly worried, and as their positions have often been reversed, she knows well how that kind of concern can eat away at a person.

He loves her just as much as she loves him. It would be awful to leave him to wonder and fret just because she’s too tired to calm him if he reacts poorly.

So she folds. “Very well. I suppose it’s silly to keep it to myself anyway. The truth is, I was—well, I was made very uncomfortable this afternoon.”

“Uncomfortable how?” he asks, eyes narrowed.

“There’s a new man in biomechanics,” she says. “We had an…unpleasant encounter shortly before I left.”

Grant’s eyes narrow further. His expression is almost dangerous, and Jemma knows she should downplay what happened. But she’s not accustomed to keeping secrets from Grant, and in any case, she always feels better once she’s shared whatever’s bothering her with him.

The whole story comes spilling out of her. She shares every detail of disquiet and unease, and, gradually, Grant’s dangerous expression is replaced by one of sympathy.

“I’m sorry, sweetheart,” he says. He took her hands, at some point, and his thumbs rub comforting circles on the back of them. “Is there anything I can do?”

She actually feels much lighter, having shared her burden—and that’s on top of the gestures Grant has already made: making her tea, offering easy sympathy, and, most importantly, respecting her unspoken desire for privacy earlier. It’s not in Grant’s nature to be patient when it comes to her, and she knows her uncharacteristic behavior must have been driving him spare while she lingered in the shower. That he gave her the space she needed—that he waited for her to come to him, rather than demanding answers—means more to her than she can say.

“You already have,” she says, and leans forward to kiss him sweetly. “Thank you for caring, darling.”

“That’s the last thing you ever need to thank me for.” He squeezes her hands, smile so fond she can’t help but return it. “You want some dinner?”

Though she’s feeling much better, the knots today tied in her stomach have yet to untangle, and not even Grant’s cooking can tempt her. She shakes her head.

“I’m not hungry just yet,” she says. “Perhaps we could watch a film first?”

“Sure,” he says. “Anything you want, sweetheart.”

Exhausted as she is, it’s hardly surprising that she doesn’t even last twenty minutes into the film before dozing off against Grant’s shoulder. She stirs briefly when he lifts her off the couch, and then the next thing she knows, he’s tucking her into their bed.

“Sleep well,” he murmurs, kissing her forehead. “I’ll be back in a bit.”

She means to ask where he’s going, but sleep is dragging at her. His kiss seems to linger on her skin as she fades into slumber, feeling warm and safe and very, very loved.


	46. "I think I'm in love with you and I'm terrified"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [For the **Reunion** theme at Ward x Simmons Winter.]
> 
> Anonymous asked: "biospecialist “I think I’m in love with you and I’m terrified.” please and thank you"

Grant is asleep beside her, breathing deep and even, when Jemma realizes for the first time that she loves him.

It feels both belated and far too soon; they’ve known each other for less than a year and have slept together only a handful of times, and in that regard love seems like quite a leap. On the other hand….

On the other hand, he killed his own mentor for her two weeks ago.

Her stomach twists even now to think of it, to remember Garrett’s leer, the dismissive way he spoke to Grant, his easy assumption that Grant would betray Jemma—betray _SHIELD_ —on his order…and, worse, the shock on his face as he fell with a bullet in his chest.

Grant was sick, after, and she held him as he shook for nearly an hour. Surely she should have realized she loved him then, when he clung to her and buried his face in her shoulder—when he hid his tears from the team by letting them soak through her shirt.

Surely her reaction to his willingness to accept her comfort should have tipped her off.

Yet somehow, it didn’t. She didn’t recognize the warmth in her chest as anything other than concern, just as she assigned no particular meaning to the hollowness she’s felt these past two weeks, as the team’s efforts to salvage as much of SHIELD as possible saw them separated. She didn’t give her glee at their reunion any thought—and even the desperation with which she kissed him and dragged him to her room didn’t spark any recognition.

It’s only now, in the quiet of her bed, witnessing the peace on his face as he sleeps, that it clicks.

She loves him.

Oh dear.

She must give some physical indication of her epiphany, because it’s only moments after she accepts it that Grant stirs.

“Jem?” he mumbles, arm tightening around her waist. “Something wrong?”

“No, no.” She pats his chest reassuringly, careful to avoid the still-healing cut on his clavicle. “Everything’s fine. Go back to sleep.”

Unfortunately, her time on the team, though surprisingly educational, has done nothing to improve her skill in lying. Her tone only rouses Grant further, and he pushes up onto his elbow to scan first the room and then her.

“What is it?” he asks, eyes so completely alert she would never guess he was slurring a moment ago.

“It’s _nothing_ ,” she insists, and gives him a little shove. “I’m just—being silly. You’re exhausted; go back to sleep.”

He frowns, giving her another, slower once-over. “You’re upset. That’s not nothing.”

They’re equally as stubborn as each other, and she knows that if she lets them, they’re perfectly capable of going in circles about this for the rest of the night, with him demanding answers while she refuses to admit there’s anything wrong. Which is actually somewhat tempting—certainly it’s more appealing than actually answering his question—but it’s the last thing Grant needs. The Sandbox didn’t fall easily; they lost it eventually, but the specialists on the ground, Grant especially, put up quite a fight beforehand.

He doesn’t need to sit up all night fretting over nothing, not when he spent the last two weeks fighting a losing war against HYDRA. He’s more than earned his rest.

So, with a sigh, she sits up, the better to fix her gaze on the far wall—that way, she doesn’t have to see his face when she speaks.

“I think I’m in love with you,” she admits, and though she may not be looking at him, she’s still close enough to feel him stop breathing. “And I’m terrified.”

Grant sits up slowly, and Jemma closes her eyes, waiting.

“I’m not terrified,” he says, quietly, tone so odd that she simply _has_ to see what expression might accompany it.

When she opens her eyes, he’s smiling—a small, private smile, of the sort she’s never seen him give anyone but her. Her heart lifts and clenches simultaneously; she doesn’t know what the smile means, but he’s so _lovely_.

_How_ did it take her so long to realize what she felt?

“No?” she asks, a touch tremulously. “What are you, then?”

“Relieved,” he says, and kisses her soundly.

It’s a deep kiss, sweetly demanding, and by the time the burn in her lungs forces its end, she’s nearly forgotten the conversation. She’s ended up in Grant’s lap, somehow, and as they catch their breath, he rests his forehead against hers.

“The whole time I was gone,” he murmurs, “I missed you every second.” He breathes a quiet laugh. “Out there in the damned desert, trying to defend the Sandbox, and all I could think about was how upset you’d be if you saw all the destroyed labs.”

Perhaps such talk should worry her—really, imagine if he’d been injured because he was distracted by thoughts of her!—but she finds herself smiling, nonetheless.

“Really?” she asks.

“Really.” He cups her face in both hands and kisses her again, chastely. “I love you, too.”


	47. reunions (Jemma/Hive)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I….have no idea what this is. At all. It just kind of sprung into my head fully formed about halfway through the midseason premiere, so….*shrug*. Does contain **SLIGHT SPOILERS** for **Episode 3x11: Bouncing Back.**

The moment Jemma lays eyes on what’s waiting for her in the room to which she’s been dragged, shock and fear knock her right out of her own skin.

It’s the only way to describe it. Her insides go cold while the rest of her feels numb and distant; she loses track of her feet entirely, and if not for the grip her escort maintains on her arm, she certainly would have fallen.

She’s been frightened before, but this—this is pure terror.

Which is the only sensible reaction, really, considering the circumstances.

The creature—and it’s definitely the creature, for all that it’s somehow wearing Ward’s skin (and poorly, at that)—smiles slightly. Its eyes linger on her for a moment, then slide to Malick.

“You still don’t believe,” It says in a light, eerie voice. “But she does. She _knows_ what I am. Don’t you?”

What she knows is that she’s been here before, cornered by Malick and Ward (or his face, at least)—and even the Inhuman who tortured her for hours without once introducing himself. She didn’t collapse then, and she won’t collapse now, for all that the horrible truth of the creature’s survival is eating away at the very heart of her.

Terrified she may be, but there’s no reason to make it so _obvious_. She lifts her chin. “I know that you’ve looked better. What’s the matter? Having trouble _adjusting_?”

It tilts Its head, somehow birdlike, and Its eyes burn in a way they never did when they were Ward’s.

“Your Fitz nearly killed me,” It says. “And your Coulson killed this body. I’m recovering.”

Something about that—about the creature calling Coulson and Fitz hers—sits uncomfortably in her chest. It feels significant, somehow.

That’s probably a bad sign.

“You’re _pathetic_ ,” she corrects, letting her discomfort fuel her anger instead of her fear. Because she _does_ have plenty of anger—anger for Will, who died for nothing, anger at HYDRA, which _refuses_ to die and which has caused her so much pain, and anger at this _thing_ , which kept her in terror for six and a half horrible months. “Look at you, you can barely stand.” She flicks a contemptuous glare at Malick. “ _This_ is the great Inhuman you’ve been worshipping for ce—”

A sudden, horribly familiar pressure makes itself known in her head, killing her voice and bringing her nearly to her knees. Once again, only her escort’s iron grip keeps her from falling.

“Careful, Jemma,” It says lightly, and the way Its voice wraps around her name is even worse than Its presence in her mind.

“Stop it,” she grits out. “Get out of my head.”

It closes Its eyes, smiling almost fondly as Its cold power settles into place.

She didn’t realize until her return from the planet that she’d been feeling It the whole time she was there. She adjusted to Its presence in her mind like a splinter in her finger; only the sudden absence of it when she returned to Earth told her it had ever been there at all.

And now It is on Earth, and It brought Its powers with It. Something like nostalgia burns in her throat, and for just a moment, she longs for the dark tunnels she and Will called home.

“My favorite mind,” It murmurs. “The very best of them.” It opens Its eyes to frown at Malick. “All that time…you never sent me a genius.”

Malick looks between It and Jemma cautiously. “Does that…make it better?”

“Much,” It says, and lowers itself back onto the couch It’s been leaning against.

Or at least she _thinks_ it’s a couch, until her escort, at a tip of the head from It, drags her forward, and she sees that it’s actually a bed. For the first time, she forces herself to look beyond It—to take in the bare walls, the TV screens depicting news footage of chaos and destruction, and the cart off to the side, piled high with empty plates.

The only real furniture in the room is the bed.

Is this Its _bedroom_?

“Sit,” It orders, and Jemma’s escort forces her down before she can refuse.

For a moment, terror knots her stomach at what It might intend, but It shakes Its head at her.

“I won’t hurt you,” It says. “I missed you.” It tips Its head in that birdlike way again. “You’re not going to leave me again.”

“Yes,” she says, “I am.” She has no weapons, makeshift or otherwise, and no way of contacting her team, but—she is absolutely leaving. She’ll find a way. “You can’t keep me here.”

It smiles and shifts closer, reaching out to weave cold fingers in her hair. Not just cold, _freezing_ —and she shivers as much from the chill of them as from the reminder that It is occupying a _corpse_. The corpse of a man she once called friend, even.

“Yes, I can,” It says, stroking her hair away from her face. “And I will.”

“I escaped you once,” she reminds It, “and you were stronger then. You had a whole planet at your disposal before, and you couldn’t stop me.” She gives It her most disdainful smile, which is no easy feat when It is, to put it plainly, _petting_ her. “What do you have now?”

Its hand falls away, and It tips Its head at Malick.

“Anyone who lets her escape dies,” It says. “Believe that.”

There’s something _odd_ about that phrasing—and It was talking about belief before, too, wasn’t It, when she first arrived?—but Jemma’s attention is focused more on Malick’s slow nod than Its word choice.

“I do believe,” he says, and Its smile in response is terrifyingly pleased.

“I have a believer,” It tells Jemma. “And soon, I’ll have more.”


	48. reunions: 24 hours later (Jemma/Hive)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sapphireglyphs asked: "May I please have a 24 hour time stamp for "REUNIONS" please?! I love that fic so much!! <3"
> 
> -This follows the previous chapter; you might wanna read that first.

The drug quiets Jemma’s mind, smoothing over the rough edges of her anger and fear, and makes it much more pleasant for him to linger in.

It’s still not as nice as it was on the other world, when every inch of her being sung with her love for Will, wrapping him in warmth and pleasure, but it’s an improvement. Given time, he’ll bring the love back (and make certain it’s for _him_ , this time), and for now, this will do—as much as he’d prefer her to be more aware.

She’s not unconscious, simply docile—peaceful—enough not to irritate his senses. She’s barely moved in hours, remaining contently in place—curled on her side with her head resting on his knee—even when he started stroking her hair. There was a moment of unhappiness at his touch, but only a moment. Her thoughts are a calm river that has long since flowed away from any kind of distress.

As such, the sudden spike of it sharpens his focus.

It’s nothing to do with him; he establishes that at once. Intrigued, he sinks further into her mind, plunging into the river of her thoughts, and finds her distress centered on the mortal with the telekinetic powers, whose entrance he noted but paid little thought.

It appears that was a mistake.

“Jemma is distressed,” he says, lifting his eyes from the screens to look at the man. “You upset her.”

The telekinetic swallows, and his mind—boring, predictable, holding not even a fraction of the appeal of Jemma’s—turns in on itself, memories bubbling up unbidden. Jemma’s scream echoes in his skull, terrified and pleading and nothing at all like the sweet one that paints Will’s most reverent memories.

His eyes narrow.

“She tried to keep us from opening the portal,” the telekinetic says, tone on the edge of beseeching. “The only way to reach you was—”

His voice only worsens Jemma’s distress. The calm river has become a raging torrent, fighting the false stillness of the drug. Her own memories make themselves known—memories of pain.

He doesn’t approve.

At all.

It’s the work of only a moment to gather them, to add the weight of his own displeasure, and then to plant them directly in the mind of the telekinetic. The mortal’s subsequent screaming collapse is satisfying, though little enough in the way of punishment.

He ignores the guards who come running, focusing instead on soothing Jemma. The distress the telekinetic woke within her has given her the drive to fight the drug, and her peaceful expression has soured. It’s worsened for a moment by the pass of his fingers over her cheek—she has unpleasant memories of this body, too—but a touch of his power sends her deeper into her own mind, and the drug does the rest.

In moments, her thoughts have calmed back to a peaceful river. Her expression smooths out, and as he resumes stroking her hair, she thinks dreamily of Grant Ward—of comfort after near-death.

He frowns.

The giddy warmth that thrums through her as her mind wanders further along that path—strong arms holding her securely, a small smile brightening her day, a play on words undoing her—displeases him. Any feelings she holds for this body should be aimed at _him_ , not its former occupant.

The hatred, he decides, was better than this misdirected affection.

He won’t use this drug again. There are others, he knows—others he can learn of from Jemma’s own mind; her knowledge of chemicals is varied and endlessly useful—which might make her more biddable without robbing her so of reason.

Eventually, he won’t need the drugs at all. Eventually, she’ll be happy to remain with him here, and all her happy thoughts will be of him.

Until then…they have time to experiment.


	49. belonging (Jemma/Hive)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was written and posted on tumblr directly after 3x15.

The first thing Phil does, upon turning a corner to find the thing wearing Ward’s face patiently waiting for him, is make a mental note to apologize to Simmons.

This is because even though he’s listened attentively and calmly to everything she had to say about the creature, he’s been privately skeptical—and even once had to stop himself from scoffing. Everything she told him about the creature’s power and presence sounded like…well, like the kind of thing a woman who was stranded on a planet with something scary would invent. For a genius like Simmons, her mind is often her worst enemy; he’s been attributing most of her claims to exaggeration.

But he turns that corner and there’s a _weight_ on his mind, so sudden and heavy that for half a heartbeat he honestly thinks he’s just been hit over the head with something, and he knows he was wrong to do so.

_Old and powerful and very, very evil_ , Simmons’ voice murmurs in his memory, and—yep. That pretty much sums it up.

“Mr. Coulson,” the thing says, smiling pleasantly. “This is a surprise.”

“Yeah,” Phil says, dredging up a smile of his own. “Sorry to crash your party.”

They’re here to stop Malick and the creature from doing—something. They don’t actually know what they’re up to, but considering what happened at the _last_ building those two visited, Phil figured it was a good idea to stop it anyway. Whatever it is.

“Don’t be,” the thing says, still with that creepy smile. “Actually, I’m very glad to see you.”

…Oh, that can’t be good. Dread curls in Phil’s stomach. “And why’s that?”

“You have someone that belongs to me.” He tips his head. “I’d like her back.”

Phil takes a deep breath, fighting back his temper _and_ his sudden spike of fear. Unlike everything else about this thing, which is distinctly _not_ Ward, that covetous tone is horribly familiar. They already knew that this thing had Ward’s memories; he guesses it’s just their luck it’d inherit Ward’s creepy obsession with Daisy, too.

“You’re not getting anywhere near her,” he says firmly. “Ever.”

“You think you can stop me?” it—he? It? Phil wonders if there’s a casual way to work a request for the thing’s name into the conversation—asks.

“I think it’s best for everyone, including you, if you forget that Daisy even—”

“Daisy?” the thing interrupts in a tone of polite incomprehension.

For a second, Phil’s thrown by it, but then he takes a second to count back, and—huh. The last time they were on even half-decent (actually, that’s kind of an exaggeration; quarter-decent?) terms with Ward was for that mission in the Arctic, and Daisy was still Skye, then. Ward probably never even knew she’d changed her name, which means it’s not in his memories.

“Skye,” he says shortly. “She changed her name. And she _doesn’t_ belong to you.”

The creature laughs, a light chuckle that sends a horrible shiver down Phil’s spine. “Her? You’re absolutely right; she doesn’t belong to me at all.”

Oh, boy.

The dread in Phil’s stomach multiplies, twisting his gut into knots of something like premonition. He doesn’t know _where_ this is going, but he knows it won’t be anywhere good.

“She’s welcome to join my forces, of course,” the creature adds thoughtfully. “Her powers would be of great use to me. But I was talking about my Jemma.”

Not even Ward at his absolute creepiest ever sounded that possessive; the thing’s voice wraps so lovingly around Simmons’ name that for a second, Phil can’t even _breathe_ from fear for her.

“Jemma is _not_ yours,” he says, once he recovers.

“Of course she is,” it says reasonably. “She was sacrificed to me.”

“She was _not_ ,” Phil snaps. “It was an _accident_. The monolith—”

“She walked on my sand,” the creature interrupts. “Ate my food.” It pauses, smiles slowly. “Slept in my bed.”

The innuendo in his tone is so blindingly obvious that the thing might as well’ve put up a billboard, flashing his meaning in neon green letters. Phil goes cold.

He knows it’s not true. Simmons would’ve told them.

A small voice reminds him that she didn’t tell them about Will at first, either, that she kept him to—

Will. Of course. This _thing_ possessed him, too; it must retain his memories.

That’s horrible in a completely different way, though. Even now, it’s hard for Simmons to talk about Will, some combination of grief and the desire to keep her life with him close to her heart like a secret making each word she speaks about him a challenge to draw out of her.

The idea of this thing essentially _spying_ on those memories she’s been holding so dear—

Phil doesn’t know when, and he doesn’t know how, but he is _absolutely_ going to kill this thing.

“Surely you’re familiar with the myth of Persephone, Mr. Coulson,” it continues, still smiling. “My Jemma made herself at home on my planet. She belongs to me now. And I’d like her back.”

“Not a chance in hell,” Phil snaps, and—even though he knows it’s useless, knows that Fitz emptied a clip into this monster and it just got right back up—goes for his sidearm.

Unfortunately, he doesn’t reach it.

The ice in his veins spreads outwards, freezing him in place, and he realizes too late that there’s someone behind him (presumably an Inhuman with some kind of ice powers). No matter how hard he struggles and strains, he can’t even twitch a single muscle.

The thing wearing Ward’s face goes right on smiling.

“I think there’s a very good chance,” it muses. “I can feel her, you know. Such a beautiful mind—the best I’ve ever encountered—is very distinctive. Easy to find. Even from across the universe, I could feel her guilt and her shame. She bears the weight of my last host’s death, and is determined not to be the cause of another.”

Oh, Simmons. Phil’s heart aches at that—at what the years have done to _all_ of his kids (even this one, Ward first a traitor three or four times over, then dead at his hand, now just an empty shell some ancient evil is wearing like a suit)—but most of him is too busy feeling sick with dread to really pay it any mind.

He knows exactly where this is going.

“I think, Mr. Coulson, that my Jemma will hand herself over to me happily,” the creature says, “in order to spare your life.” It steps forward, pats Phil’s shoulder, and then keeps walking. “So, as I said. I’m very glad to see you.”


	50. first kiss (Jemma/Hive)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> anonymous asked: "First kiss for jemma/hive"

He takes his time making his way to the new mind he’s sensed on the other side of the planet. His vessel—Samuel, whose little sister cried when he said goodbye and whose father, at the last minute, apologized after ten years of silence—put up a respectable fight when Hive took him, and though it has been at least a decade, his knee still has yet to properly heal. A cross-planet trek is no middling thing.

And there’s no need to rush, in any case. His new sacrifice isn’t going anywhere.

He keeps a careful rein on his power as he approaches the sacrifice, drawing out the last few hours and then minutes before he experiences this newest mind—savoring the wait, the knowledge that soon the monotony of his existence will be broken, for a time, as he discovers whatever is to be found in the mind of his new vessel.

It’s how he approaches every new sacrifice, but as he rounds the last sand dune and lays eyes on this one, he wishes he had peeked, just this once.

The sacrifice is a woman.

He’s never been sent a woman before, and he frowns as he considers her. His worshippers know he prefers a male vessel; his sacrifices have always been men. In centuries upon centuries of travelers, never has there been a woman.

This is a puzzling change.

As he limps his way up the dune, he opens his senses to her—just a little—only to nearly be knocked back by the sheer _presence_ of her. Her mind is unlike any he has ever touched before: twisting and racing and overflowing with thought and emotion.

And all of this while she’s _unconscious_.

He hurries the last few steps, made eager by the sheer _novelty_  of her—not only a woman, but a woman with a _beautiful_ mind, one he thinks he could sink into forever—and lowers himself to kneel at her side. 

She’s lovely. 

She’d be lovelier, though, in better condition. Her face is pale and drawn, eyes shadowed by dark circles, lips cracked. She’s dehydrated. And no wonder, as she seems not to have brought anything with her: no food, no water—not even any gifts for him.

“You are a puzzle,” he says to her and, seeing no reason to deny himself, brushes her hair away from her face. His skin hums at the contact—the first he’s experienced since Samuel’s companions succumbed to the pressure of his power and took their own lives. “What—”

His voice flees, chased away by the sight of the mark on her neck.

_His_  mark.

It’s his soulmark, the intricate, tangled knot that has followed him from vessel to vessel, from year to year, for endless, empty centuries. He’s had it since his very first body—since before he became better than human, even. He had despaired of ever finding its match.

And yet here it is, carved beautifully into the side of this woman’s neck. Into the side of _his soulmate’s_ neck.

His _dying_ soulmate.

She’ll be fine. He has water and food aplenty in the crumbling castle he makes his home, and—given, now, reason to rush—he can have her there in seconds.

Still. It’s obvious from her state that she’s been days without water. She must have suffered while she was conscious, clinging desperately to life as it slipped inexorably through her fingers. He has memories from past vessels; he knows how unpleasant dehydration is.

Perhaps…just a touch of his power. Just to ease her pain.

He draws her into his lap, reveling in the warm weight of her. How long has it been since he— _Hive_ , personally—held a woman? He thought the memories obtained from sacrifices were sufficient, but they were only pale imitations, passing glimpses of the real thing.

Cupping her jaw, he leans down and covers her mouth with his. It’s a convenient way to give her some of himself, to share the strength that sustains him, but more than that, it’s a guarantee. Though their bond cannot be formed by a kiss she isn’t conscious for, the open connection nonetheless stirs tantalizingly in the back of his mind.

She’ll be conscious soon enough. Then, they can become acquainted. And then, finally, after _centuries_  of waiting…then he’ll be _whole_.


	51. Singularity AU (Jemma/Hive)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> anonymous asked: "♥: Reacting to the other one crying about something Jemma/Maveth"
> 
> I stretched the prompt a lot. This drabble was written and posted on tumblr the night 3x18: The Singularity aired.

Jemma’s looking for Fitz.

That’s all she’s doing and it’s all she’s thinking about. It’s all she can _afford_ to think about. Anything else (anything _worse_ ) must wait until she’s somewhere safe. For now, she is in danger— _Fitz_ is in danger—and she can’t afford the distraction of—

A sudden wave of force hits her hand, tearing her gun from her grasp and sending it flying. Momentum carries her a few steps further before she uses the rest of it to whirl and face Daisy.

“Daisy—”

“We’re proud of you, Jemma,” Daisy says, with a gentle smile. “We know that couldn’t have been easy.”

Oh, no.

“We?” she asks, though she has the unfortunate feeling that clarification is unnecessary.

Daisy smiles beatifically. “All of us. Hive.”

Yes. She was rather afraid of that.

“Your actions prove you’ve let go,” Daisy continues, stepping towards her. “We’re happy to see Will’s memory isn’t holding you back.”

His name threatens to bring forth the tears she’s only barely pushed back, but somehow, she fights past it. Tears and the hollow in her chest and his _voice_ (“dead like me,” he said, how could he _say_ that, how could he make her _hear_ it) can wait. She needs to find Fitz and get out of here.

She can’t let her love for Daisy stop her from doing that. She’s not giving up on her—she will _never_ give up on her—but right now, she doesn’t have the slightest clue how to cure her, and there’s no way to bring her in.

Of course, there’s no easy way to escape her, either.

Although…he—It—didn’t stop her from running. Perhaps Daisy won’t either?

“Holding me back from what?” she asks, inching experimentally away. Daisy doesn’t even blink, let alone move to stop her. It’s very encouraging…but only for a moment.

Then the door she slammed through not two minutes ago swings open to admit Hive, and the bottom drops out of her stomach.

“From your destiny,” he replies, in a tone much less grand than his words would suggest.

“My destiny?” Just like before, he’s walking so very slowly towards her, wearing that _face_ , but this time she can’t retreat. She can’t even make a grab for her gun. She’s simply frozen, held in place by the weight of his gaze and the emotion behind his smile. “What…destiny would that be?”

His smile widens, and it’s _worse_ than before. There’s no Will in it—no Ward, even. This smile, she thinks, must be entirely him.

And in light of the sheer amount of _affection_ in it…it’s petrifying.

“I’m going to make this world better,” he says. He’s reached her, finally, and stops close enough that her chest brushes his with every terrified breath she drags in. “I will end pain, end fear…from the throne of this world I will put an end to war.” He tucks her hair sweetly behind her ear, smiling down at her with so much love that her throat aches with it. “And it is your destiny to be beside me when I do.”

“ _No_.” She stumbles back, her feet finally as ready as the rest of her to flee, only to be held in place by—someone. Someone behind her, someone male that she doesn’t think she knows, but she can’t pull her eyes away from _him_ to check. “No, you’re—”

He’s _what_? Insane? Toying with her? That seems more likely, but he’s still smiling away, and his fondness is still not Ward’s, just like his tenderness isn’t Will’s.

This is him— _it_ —looking at her like she’s something precious.

He steps forward, closing the meager distance she put between them, and cups her face gently.

“You will be my queen,” he murmurs. “You will let go of Fitz as you let go of Will, and you will see and understand our love for you.”

She shakes her head, mute with terror—it must be terror—and he sighs and bends to kiss her hair.

“You’ll see,” he promises, and then straightens and turns to Daisy. “Fitz?”

“I warned him,” she says—quickly, before Jemma’s heart can sink any further. “He’s not hurt.”

“Good.” He smiles, then looks over Jemma’s head to the man holding her. “And the other?”

“Got away,” the man—she definitely doesn’t know him, but the Australian accent gives her a guess as to his identity—answers. “I tried, but he was a quick bastard.”

“That’s fine,” Hive says. “As long as he isn’t here.”

He returns his attention to Jemma, and his calm smile immediately fades into something sad and…ancient, is the only word she can apply to it. It doesn’t make sense, not in relation to a face as young and as handsome as his— _Ward’s_ —but it’s simply the only thing she can think.

“Oh, Jemma,” he sighs, and cups her face once more. As he swipes his thumbs over her cheeks, she realizes that she’s crying. It’s a belated realization, to be sure, but she’s spent so much of the last—what, year? Two years?—on the edge of sobbing that sometimes it’s difficult to tell the difference between actually weeping and just _wanting_ to.

“Don’t cry.” That’s Daisy, sliding in for a sideways hug. She presses her cheek to Jemma’s shoulder, an odd, off-beat echo to the way Hive rests his forehead against hers. “Everything’s gonna be great, Jem, you’ll see. We’re gonna make the world better.”

If they’re intending to reassure her, they’ve failed completely. She’s trapped, both literally—between the creature from the planet that terrorized and _murdered_ Will, a blissfully brainwashed Daisy, and a complete stranger whose restraining hands are horribly gentle on her arms—and metaphorically.

She _shot_ Hive. _Multiple times_. Yet it was only minutes before he followed her, looking as good as new. He wasn’t even displeased by it, only made proud.

Even if her gun was within reach, it wouldn’t do her any good. And—unlike the rest of them—she has no Inhuman abilities at her disposal. She can’t fight them.

She can’t _escape_ them.

“No,” Hive agrees, reading her mind with an ease that doesn’t surprise her at all. “But then, why would you want to?”


	52. things you said that made me happy

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> safelycapricious asked: "Things you said that made me happy, Biospecialist"

Grant is just stepping out of Coulson’s office when Simmons rounds the corner at the end of the hall.

She doesn’t see him at first; she’s focused on his guards, who were left to wait outside during the very secret meeting he just finished. She considers them with clear suspicion, stopping a few feet away and crossing her arms with a scowl.

“What are you doing lurking about out—oh.”

_Now_ she spots him, and her arms drop limply to her sides.

The last time they saw each other, she threatened to kill him—a threat he took a lot less seriously before he found out she survived months undercover in HYDRA. She’s changed since their days on the Bus, which means he can’t dismiss her out of hand; she might actually be dangerous, as hard as that is to imagine.

So instead of saying hello, maybe asking how she’s been (or maybe not; Fitz sure didn’t like that question), he waits, leaving it to her to make the first move. He’s aware of Morse edging out of the office behind him—probably thinks he’s up to something, sticking around like this—but keeps his eyes on Simmons.

So he sees the way her mouth tightens slightly when Morse says her name. He also sees the brilliant smile that replaces her blank expression half a second later.

“Thank God you’re back,” she says, and then takes two steps forward and throws her arms around him.

For a second, Grant’s frozen by shock—but _only_ for a second. He prides himself on his ability to roll with the punches, and he can absolutely roll with this one. She’s stiff against him, obviously a lot more nervous than her warm welcome would suggest, so he’s careful to keep his arms loose when he returns her hug: nothing to make her feel trapped or threatened.

“Good to see you too, Simmons,” he says, releasing her as soon as she steps back. “How’ve you been?”

“Worried,” is her simple reply. She beams up at him. “Not that I need to be, now that you’re here. I’m so glad there’ll be someone I can _trust_ watching our backs.”

There’s a hell of a lot of emphasis laid on the word trust, but it’s not aimed at him. If he had to guess, based on Morse’s wounded eyes, he’d say it’s for her.

Interesting.

“Simmons,” she says, “you know I—”

“How are _you_?” Simmons asks him, blatantly ignoring Morse. “Have you recovered from the wounds you sustained in Puerto Rico?” She glances at his torso, mouth pursed like she can see through his shirt to the scars beneath and isn’t impressed at all. “Dare I hope you were sensible during your convalescence?”

“I’m fine,” he says. “I had a good nurse.”

At the reference to Kara, Morse—the bitch—barely blinks, but Simmons straightens.

“Oh, good,” she says. “And speaking of Agent Palamas—well, as we’re complete strangers I didn’t want to ask her outright, but perhaps you could pass along an offer to—”

“Everything okay?” Coulson asks, tone carefully casual. He’s come up behind Grant, who naturally heard him coming but was too focused on Simmons (and where that sentence might have been going) to care. “Jemma?”

“Of course,” she says. “Why wouldn’t it be? After all—” she smiles sweetly “—all is forgiven, isn’t it?”

The words are accompanied by a deliberate glance at Morse, and Grant is suddenly and weirdly reminded of his first op out of the Academy. It was a half-undercover, half-protection assignment on which he spent nine weeks playing the bad seed, letting the rebellious daughter of a state governor seduce him to make some kind of point to her dad. Something about her independence or femininity or…something. Grant never really understood it.

Point is, he’s getting the same kind of vibe off of Simmons. She’s using him—or rather, using _forgiving_ him—as a weapon, trying to get under Morse’s (and maybe Coulson’s) skin.

He can respect that.

“Okay, look,” Morse says, moving forward. Simmons inches closer to Grant in response, making Morse’s already strained smile tighten further. “I know you’re upset, and I get that, but what we did isn’t—”

“Isn’t exactly the same thing Ward did?” Simmons interrupts, tone falsely pleasant. “You didn’t save our lives and pretend to be our friend to gain our trust, only to turn against us in the midst of a crisis?”

Huh. That does sound familiar.

“Simmons—”

“You were more loyal to Gonzales than you were to Coulson,” she continues, “just as Ward was more loyal to John Garrett than he was to our team.” She takes one very deliberate step closer to Grant. “But that’s all right, because everyone has been forgiven. No hard feelings whatsoever.”

Grant had no idea that Simmons was capable of this kind of friendly spite, but he really loves it. And he’s more than happy to help her get at Morse however she can. (He also doesn’t hate how old and tired Coulson looks right now.)

He’s also got more experience messing with people than she does, so he knows that this is when she needs to make her exit. She’s gotten a few good barbs in, made her point by welcoming him with literal open arms while snubbing Morse, and now it’s time to leave before she gets drawn into an actual debate about Morse’s apparent crimes.

So he puts a swift end to the conversation by slinging a friendly arm around Simmons’ shoulders and turning her towards the end of the hall.

“Glad to hear it,” he says. “Now, what were you saying about Kara?”

She’s tense against his side, but gradually relaxes as they walk and she tells him about some brainwashing detection scans she’d like to run—scans that’ll give Kara some peace of mind, and he could kiss her for that, he really could.

Almost as much as he could kiss her for the stares burning at his back as they leave Coulson and Morse behind. They’re practically _vibrating_ with helpless fury, so upset to see Simmons playing nice with him but unwilling—for whatever reason—to actually, physically stop her from doing it.

Grant doesn’t know exactly what’s going on here, but he is so, so glad he came.


	53. a kiss on the cheek

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ilosttrackofthings asked: "biospec + a kiss on the cheek"

“Say the word and I’ll kill him for you.”

Even though the voice is unexpected, as Jemma would have sworn she was alone, she doesn’t jump. She’s grown inured to Ward’s tendency for sneaking up on her; these days, she barely startles at all when he surprises her.

Instead, she merely sighs. “No, thank you.”

“Offer stands,” he says, leaning next to her against the lab table. “Just let me know.”

“It’s very generous of you,” she says dryly. “But my answer won’t change.”

Despite his sudden appearance, she doesn’t bother reaching for her phone or attempting to sound the alarm. In the past year, Ward’s made something of a habit of dropping by the Playground whenever the mood strikes, and while they haven’t exactly given up on keeping him out…well, none of their efforts to tighten security have been successful. Somehow, he always finds a way in.

It would be more worrying if his intentions weren’t so (relatively) harmless. He hasn’t injured any of the team on his visits, or even outside of them. In fact, he’s been downright friendly—at least for a murderous traitor. He’ll drop by, spend a while with Jemma, Fitz, or Skye, and then leave again, no harm done. Sometimes he’ll offer them favors—for example, he regularly offers to kill people on Jemma’s behalf, and habitually shows up to oversee Skye’s training whenever May is gone—but for the most part he just…hangs about and chats.

In short, he seems determined to act as though they’re still friends. Skye is insistent that he’s attempting to lull them into a false sense of security, and they all agree.

None of them are willing to admit that it’s working.

“What’s his problem, anyway?” Ward asks, frowning after the just-departed Lorenzo.

“We were at the Academy together,” she answers. She saves her half-finished report and turns away from the computer; experience has taught her that there’s no point in attempting any real work when Ward is around. “He wanted to date, I didn’t, and he took the rejection…rather poorly.”

“Did he,” Ward says thoughtfully, and she thumps him on the arm in reflexive response to the tone.

“I said no,” she reminds him. “Leave him be.”

His face is blank as he looks from her to the place on his arm where she struck him and back again, and Jemma has only a moment to be afraid of his response—to suddenly remember that he’s a traitor and a murderer, rather than a friend—before he grins.

“What’ll you give me if I do?”

She gives him her best unimpressed stare. “You need incentive not to kill someone? Really?”

“When that someone’s a dick to you?” he counters. “Yeah. I do. So?”

His face is so expectant that some tiny part of her actually considers refusing to engage further on this topic, solely to see what he’ll do. Would he _actually_ kill Lorenzo simply for being rude to her? He must know it would set back his efforts to win them all over, and yet he sounds so _sincere_ in his offer. She can’t help but be curious.

Still, as a SHIELD agent it’s her duty to protect _all_ life, even life belonging to complete berks incapable of handling rejection. Not for the first time, her morals must outweigh her curiosity.

“Very well,” she says. “What do you want?”

For a moment he appears surprised, as though he expected her not to play along; then, his expression turns crafty, and an amused sort of dread (an odd combination, to be sure) settles in the pit of Jemma’s stomach.

Finally, after a worrying pause, he smiles. “A kiss.”

“A—” Jemma blinks, taken wholly aback. “A _what_?”

“A kiss,” he repeats, in a tone that seems to suggest this is a perfectly reasonable request.

“…Why?” she asks. If asked, she couldn’t possibly describe her own tone—any more than she could describe what she’s _feeling_. There’s a tightness in her chest, though whether it’s born of excitement or suspicion or annoyance or giddiness or—

She doesn’t know. She really doesn’t.

“Only seems fair, don’t you think?” Ward shrugs. “If you’re gonna deny me the pleasure of killing him, at least give me the satisfaction of getting what he wanted but couldn’t have.”

Briefly, she’s tempted to point out that Lorenzo certainly wanted more than just a _kiss_ from her, but her better judgment wins out. _That_ is a path she thinks it’s better not to lead them down.

“I suppose it is fair, at that,” she says instead.

So, without further ado, she steps forward and, gripping Ward’s upper arms for leverage, pulls herself onto her toes to kiss his cheek.

He’s frowning when she pulls back. Once, such an expression would have scared her, but they’ve progressed far enough towards reconciliation that she can see it’s more petulant than truly displeased.

“I think you know that’s not what I meant,” he says, a bit sulkily.

“ _I_ think you should have specified,” she sasses back, and—though she knows she shouldn’t—delights in his answering grin. “And if you want another, I’m afraid you’re going to have to earn it.”

“Huh.” He frowns again—thoughtful, now, instead of petulant. “I can do that.”

She intends to make a joke of that, continue on with the not entirely unfriendly banter that has become standard in _all_ of the team’s interactions with Ward, but…something stops her. Something—the weight behind his gaze, perhaps—makes her feel this is about more than getting one over on Lorenzo. More, even, than addressing the minor wrong of Lorenzo’s attitude.

That strange tightness has returned to her chest. It’s not entirely unpleasant.

“Perhaps you can,” she says, rather more softly than she means to.

“I will,” he promises, and it doesn’t sound like a joke at all.


	54. falling asleep with their head in the other's lap

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> isissisi8 asked: "♗: One falling asleep with their head in the other's lap. Biospecialist please."

To say that things are tense with the team would be an extreme understatement.

Grant’s a traitor twice over—one to the team, once to John—and that the second betrayal was in the team’s favor doesn’t erase the scars the first one left. Things are easier than they were at first, and he only spent about two weeks in a cell, but they’re still not great. It’s gonna take time—more time—before they’re in anything that can be called a good place.

He knows that, and he gets it, and he realizes that it’s his own fault. That doesn’t mean he likes it or that it’s fun, and as such, he’s done everything he can to speed the process along.

A big part of that is knowing where to be and when.

Sometimes he needs to just hang around, be _present_ in common areas without actually forcing his company on anyone. Sometimes he needs to involve himself in conversation—especially when the conversation is centered on inside jokes and reminiscing about their Bus days. And sometimes, it’s better not to be seen at all, to just make himself scarce for a while.

That’s how things are leaning right now, and it’s kind of a problem. The whole reason he needs to be out of sight is that they just came back from a complete clusterfuck of a mission, and Grant is _exhausted_. He collapsed onto the couch in the common room as soon as they got back, and he just can’t muster up the energy to get up and back to his room. Every single inch of him hurts.

So even though he knows it’s time to disappear, he can’t. He’s just…sitting in the corner of the couch, trying to give off _invisible_ vibes while the team moves in and out of the room. Mostly out, if he’s honest.

He’s not gonna lie, it stings.

When Simmons crosses through the kitchen, he’s expecting her to do the same awkward _grab what she came for and flee_ thing the others have. He’s _not_ expecting her to keep walking until she reaches him.

“Hey,” he says, tentatively, as she stops on the other side of the coffee table.

Thanks to her little undercover gig (and words cannot possibly express what a _stupid_ idea that was; if Grant hadn’t been in a cell at the time, he absolutely would have beaten some sense into Coulson), Simmons is the member of the team he’s spent the least time with since his change of heart. She hasn’t had as much chance as the others to get used to him—to _forgive_ him—and it definitely shows.

But it’s not the only thing showing right now, he realizes once he gets a good look at her. She’s looking pale and a little sick, and her eyes are rimmed red like she’s been crying.

And she’s just _standing_ there, staring at him with that miserable little frown.

Grant sits forward. “What’s wrong? Did something happen?”

Simmons huffs a tiny and utterly humorless laugh.

“Simmons—”

“I’m so angry at you,” she interrupts.

Ah. So it’s time for confrontation, then. He was wondering when she’d get around to it; all the others got theirs out of the way back in June.

“Yeah,” he says, sitting back. “I know. And you have every right—”

“Shut up.”

He shuts up.

“I’m so angry at you,” she repeats, “but I’m tired of being angry. I’m tired of—” She looks around the common room, appearing almost lost. “I’m tired.”

Unsure where this is going, Grant stays quiet—and it must be the right decision, because after a second, she nods once and rounds the coffee table.

“I don’t forgive you,” she says, conversationally, as she drops down next to him. “But I suppose I trust you a bit.”

That’s…not _great_ , but he’ll take it. “Thank you.”

“Mm.” Her smile is barely deserving of the name; this close, she looks every bit as exhausted as he feels. “I need you to do something for me.”

“Sure,” he says. He really hopes it doesn’t involve moving. “Anything. What do you need?”

“Just…keep everyone away, would you?” she asks.

“What—?”

He chokes on the rest of his question when, without further ado, Simmons lies down along the couch, resting her head on his thigh and curling her hands under her chin.

“We’re on the Bus,” she says, almost like an order. “HYDRA doesn’t exist and our team consists solely of six people.”

Denying reality isn’t all that healthy a coping method, but hey, who’s he to point fingers? If she wants to pretend, let her; he’s just glad she’s pretending in a way that goes in his favor.

She fell asleep on him more than once, back in those days. So did Skye and Fitz; apparently he makes a good pillow. It bugged him sometimes, then (mostly when it was Fitz; guy snores like a chainsaw), but after so long spent on barely friendly terms with his old team…it’s nice.

“Sure,” he agrees. There’s a throw folded along the back of the couch, and he twists to grab it and drape it over her. The Playground is consistently fifteen degrees colder than they ever kept the Bus; she won’t be able to pretend very well if she’s shivering. “Whatever you want.”

“HYDRA doesn’t exist,” she repeats, voice slowing like she’s already half-way to sleep. “But if it did…I would’ve missed you while I was there.”

“Yeah.” Because she started it by using him as a pillow, he strokes a gentle hand over her hair. “I would’ve missed you, too.”


	55. writing on skin soulmates AU

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> anonymous asked: "Amy, can I request a Biospecialist soulmates AU fic or drabble, in which when one writes on their skin, it also appears on the other's?"

Grant’s halfway through evaluating the newest batch of recruits when he feels it.

It’s been more than a year since Jemma wrote on him. He’s written to her a few times—an apology after what happened in Cuba, to tell her he was proud when he learned she’d been undercover, a warning that Whitehall was gunning for her, that kind of thing—but she’s never replied and she’s sure as hell never _initiated_.

The days when she’d draw little frowny faces over his injuries and scrawl reminders about his wounds and _not to aggravate them_ on the back of his hand are long gone.

If she’s writing to him now…it can’t be anything good.

“Time for a break,” he tells Kebo and walks away.

He’s got an office of sorts on the other side of the warehouse, but he’s too impatient to wait that long; as soon as he’s out of the room, he’s shoving his sleeve up to check his skin. There’s not much, just a simple _Grant?_ on his inner forearm, but it’s a hell of a lot more than he ever expected to get again.

That doesn’t mean he’s stopped carrying a skin pen around with him, though. He pulls it out and scrawls a quick _Yeah?_ underneath his name at once. There’s plenty more he’d like to write, all kinds of things he wants—needs—to say to her, but his name is so faint (and almost shaky) on his skin that he doesn’t quite dare. It obviously took a lot out of her to start this; he doesn’t wanna scare her off.

For a minute, he’s worried he has anyway; it seems to take forever for her to respond. When she does, his heart stutters in his chest.

_I need help_ traces its way across his wrist, and now that there’s more than one word, it’s obvious her handwriting’s a mess. If her being desperate enough to ask _him_ for help wasn’t a big enough clue that something big is happening…

_Anything_ , he writes back.

He doesn’t know whether to laugh—because it’s so fucking typical—or cry at what comes next.

_I was sucked through a portal and am stranded on a desert planet. There’s no sun and no water._

Fuck.

First things first: _How long have you been there?_

She wouldn’t have turned to him right away, not with as bad as things are between them. Chances are she wasted a lot of her very limited time waiting for rescue, and with no water…

Her answer of _86 hours_ hits him like a punch to the throat.

“Okay,” he says aloud, just to hear it. He fights back the tide of hopelessness and despair that wants to overtake him; Jemma’s tough as they come, and they’ve _both_ gotten out of tighter spots than this. She’ll be fine.

_What can I do?_ he asks.

_I need you to get in touch with Fitz_ is pretty much what he was expecting, but still not fun to see. _We can figure this out, I’m sure of it. But we’ll have to use you as a conduit._

_That’s fine_ , he promises. It is, too—if it gets her home before she dies of dehydration (or whatever else a fucking _alien planet_ has to throw at her), he’ll put up with a lot worse than that. But… _It might take me some time to find him._

Her only reply is a ten digit number, and Grant doesn’t hesitate to pull out his phone.

Working with Fitz—with _SHIELD_ —is gonna be a bitch and a half, but for her, he’ll do it.

And once she’s back… _then_ he can get started on seeing that SHIELD pays dearly for failing once again to protect his soulmate.


	56. five sentence part seven

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You know the drill, right? Right.
> 
> This chapter contains Jemma/Grant, Jemma/Will, and Jemma/Hive drabbles--one of each, in that order.

_thestarfishdancer asked: For the five sentence ask thing!_ _"That's it, I'm just going to take care of it myself."_

“Good help is so hard to find,” Jemma sympathizes with a sugar sweet smile, and Grant pauses halfway around his desk.

“What did you do?” he asks, dread curling in his stomach.

She blinks at him, all doe eyes. “What makes you think I did anything?”

“Oh, for—” He finishes rounding his desk, catching her arm as he passes and dragging her toward the door as he unlocks his phone with his free hand. “We’ve been at this base for _two days_.”

“Is that all?” she asks, following complacently along. “Time seems to move so much slower when one is being _held against one’s will_ ; I’d swear it’s been at least a week.”

He’s too busy texting Markham an evac order to come up with a suitable reply to that, which is probably just as well. At the end of the day, she _is_  his prisoner, for all that she’s got a hell of a lot of freedom. 

(Freedom enough to sabotage the fourth base running; he really needs to look into getting some better grunts to guard her.)

“At least tell me you killed them,” he requests instead.

“Don’t be silly,” she says, studying her nails. Even being dragged along by her arm, she’s the picture of unconcern. “ _You’re_  the murderer, not me.”

“Perfect.” The last time she knocked her guards out, she hid them so well there wasn’t time to find them before the evac—and Grant’s pretty damn sure the ops that SHIELD subsequently crashed were down to intel those guards gave up. “You’re more trouble than you’re worth, you know that?”

She beams. “I do believe that’s the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me.” 

 

 

 

_ilosttrackofthings asked: No matter how hard she tries, she can't stop staring at him._

It’s not like there’s much to see—he’s sleeping peacefully and hasn’t so much as twitched in the last six hours—but she just _can’t_ force her eyes away. She was so afraid (so _positive_ ) that she would never see him again; she can no more look away now than she could close out of the one selfie Fitz recovered from her phone.

There’s something almost surreal about seeing him in her infirmary, away from the caves they called home, and it makes it harder to believe that he’s actually here—that this isn’t just one more fanciful dream.

But his hand is warm and _real_ , his fingers gripping tightly to hers even in sleep. He _is_  here, safe in the Playground, safe on _Earth_ , with her, where he belongs.

She has him back. She _brought_  him back. The future has been changed and disaster averted; Will is on Earth and Hive is and will remain on Maveth, rotting alone on the other side of the universe.

The horrible year she spent without him hasn’t and _won’t_  happen; she’s made sure of that. And in light of everything she had to do to make it so…

Well, she deserves a bit of staring, doesn’t she?

“And such a lovely sight you are,” she says, softly, to Will. He doesn’t wake, but his fingers tighten around hers, and her heart swells.

She kisses his knuckles and settles back, content to stare—to enjoy the sight of him breathing and alive and _here_.

 

 

 

_anonymous asked: "Hail HYDRA," she says with a smile._

Hive tips his head, plainly unimpressed.

“No?” she asks, biting her lip.

“I know you,” he reminds her, tapping her temple gently. “You are no worshipper of mine.” His knuckles drag down her cheek, stopping at the corner of her mouth that he might thumb her lower lip out from between her teeth. “Which begs the question…”

She can’t tell him why she’s here. He _cannot_  be allowed to discover her purpose. But there’s no way she can lie to him—she’s grown in leaps and bounds, but Will and Ward separately knew her well enough to read her remaining tells, and Hive has them _both_. (Not to mention the very unfair advantage of mind-reading.)

A distraction is therefore in order.

Fortunately—or perhaps _unfortunately_ —there’s a very obvious one on offer. She might not be psychic, but it doesn’t take telepathy to know what he’s thinking right now, not with the way he’s looking at and touching her.

So, for lack of other options, she fists her hands in his coat, pulls herself onto her toes, and kisses him.

As a distraction, it’s brilliant. (He’s a spectacular kisser; within seconds, even _she_  has forgotten why she’s here.) As a life choice…much less so.


	57. something happy (father's day drabble)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> anonymous asked: "Something happy for biospecialist, please and thank you?"

In light of which base they’re landing at, Grant is braced and ready to catch the tiny missile that comes rocketing up the ramp before it’s even fully lowered.

Being braced for it doesn’t do anything to lessen the white hot agony that spikes as a result of a toddler impacting his cracked ribs, but with his daughter’s delighted squeal of “Daddy!” ringing in his ears as her arms wrap around his neck, he’s never cared less about pain.

“Hi, princess,” he says, hugging her close. Squatting like this isn’t doing his ribs any favors, either, but it’s more than worth it. “Did you miss me?”

“Uh huh!” she promises, leaning back to beam at him—and then her smile almost immediately crinkles into a worried frown. “You have an ouchy!”

“Just a little one,” he says, and has to bite back a grin of his own at the look it gets him. That unamused _don’t be an idiot_ face is almost uncannily like her mother’s.

“I make it better,” she says, nodding once with resolve, and leans forward to kiss the bruise on his cheek. “Mwah! All better!”

“That _is_ better.” He shades his voice with amazement and treasures the way she brightens in the face of it. “Thank you, Hol.”

She hugs him happily. “Welcome!”

“What about you?” he asks. “You got any ouchies? Fall out of any trees lately?”

“No, Daddy,” she says, heaving a great, dramatic sigh. “No trees here.”

“Really? Not even one?”

She scrunches her index finger and thumb together, leaving a fraction of an inch between them. “Only itty bitty trees.”

“Well, that should make them perfect for you, shouldn’t it?” he asks reasonably—and then does a pointed double take. “Did you get _bigger_?”

Holly nods cheerfully.

“Oh, no,” he says. “Did Mommy experiment on you?”

“ _No_ , Daddy,” she giggles. “I _grew_!”

“Grew?” he asks skeptically. “No way. You’re too old to grow.”

“Am not!” she argues, still laughing. It’s the best sound in the world, and his heart swells to hear it.

“Are too,” he insists. “You’re twenty now, aren’t you? That’s _way_ too old for growing.”

“Daaaaaaaaddy,” she groans, making the single most adorable exasperated expression that has ever graced any face ever.

Grant’s about to push it further—because he _can_ , because she’s here and with him and for the first time in months, their conversation is happening in person instead of over a phone call that inevitably ends way too soon—when they’re interrupted.

“Excuse me, has anyone seen an escaped monkey around here?”

That voice belongs to the _other_ most important person in his life, and all the self-control in the world isn’t enough to keep Grant’s smile off his face as Jemma walks up the ramp.

“That depends,” he says, and shifts Holly to his hip as he straightens to his full height. “Can you describe this monkey?”

“Oh, you’ll know her if you see her,” Jemma says. “She’s _very_ short, for one thing—”

“ _Mommy_ ,” Holly sighs. “Daddy _knows_ it’s me!”

“Ah.” Jemma’s mouth trembles a little, but that’s the only sign she gives that she’s holding back laughter. “My mistake.” She tucks herself against his other side and stretches up to kiss him quickly. “Welcome to the Sandbox, Grant.”

“Sorry I’m late,” he says, relieved to be able to hold them both close. It doesn’t matter how many years he’s had to get used to it; being away from them for months at a time still kills him. He’s been missing them like a lost limb since the second he left. “I missed you.”

“We missed you, too,” Jemma murmurs, eyes soft with understanding.

“Lots!” is Holly’s contribution, and that’s all it takes to chase all his dark thoughts away.

(Although his awareness of Skye—still standing at the bottom of the stairs and gaping, just like she’s been since the second Holly raced up the ramp—helps, too. He’s gonna be hearing about this for _weeks_ , but damn if her gobsmacked face isn’t worth it.)

“How would you like a tour?” he offers, and they give him identical, beautiful smiles.

“Yes, please!” Holly says.

He’s already dreading leaving them again, but for the moment, the two people he loves most in the world are back at his side. Not even the pointed frown Jemma gives him—the one that promises a serious discussion later—when she feels the gauze under his shirt can spoil that.


	58. a kiss to make up

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thestarfishdancer asked: "A kiss to make up for biospecialist pretty please and thank you!"
> 
> Takes place in the same verse as [you wanna be (high for this)](http://archiveofourown.org/works/5988900?view_adult=true) but happens prior, so you shouldn’t need to read that to understand this.

“Was it just an act?”

The question shatters the silence that’s surrounded Jemma for nearly an hour, startling her so badly that she nearly overturns the box in her lap.

“Grant!” she exclaims—though it comes out as something of a squeak, thanks to her heart’s position in her throat. “I didn’t…see you there.”

It’s not surprising she missed him; he’s still as a statue, leaning against the doorjamb and blending nicely into the dark hallway in his combat suit.

There’s dirt on his face. He must have come straight here.

“I didn’t realize you were back,” she says, fidgeting with one of the box’s flaps. “I’ve been digging through storage all morning—I had to leave most of my things behind in my apartment, so I…”

Jemma trails off. He’s just _watching_ her, deliberately expressionless in a way that makes the hollow in her chest that much deeper. She’s spent months fearing the kind of reception she’d get from him on her return, but she’s still completely unprepared.

She has to look away from the horrible blankness on his face, and takes carefully setting the box aside as an excuse. The silence drags out, awful and uncomfortable in a way it’s never been before.

Of course, she’s never got in a screaming fight with him, broken up with him, and then disappeared for several months before. This is completely new territory. She much preferred the old, but she’s had time to resign herself to the fact that they may never reach it again.

“Was it just an act?” Grant finally asks—no, repeats, she realizes. It’s what he opened with; she’d already forgotten, thanks to the fright that came with it. “The fight. Was it—”

“Yes,” she interrupts. She should let him finish, but she can’t bear to let him go another moment thinking—thinking anything but the truth. “It was just—I knew you wouldn’t accept it if I said I was going to be out of contact for a while. There needed to be a reason for me not to keep in touch, and…”

“And if you could fool me, you figured you’d be good enough to fool HYDRA,” he completes. “Is that it?”

“Essentially,” she says. “Yes.”

“So everything you said,” he says, “about me smothering you and thinking I owned you—”

“I didn’t mean it,” she says, voice barely a whisper. Her heart has left her throat (it’s somewhere around her ankles, she thinks), but it’s been replaced by a horrid lump. Tears sting at her eyes; though Grant’s tone is mostly casual, she can read the hurt she did him in the tense line of his jaw. “Any of it.”

He nods once, his posture not easing at all. She can’t look at him for very long; she ached for him while she was away, and longs now to throw herself at him, to let the comfort of his love chase away the last of her lingering terror.

But she knows perfectly well that she lost that right months ago.

“I’m sorry.” Unable to look him in the eye, she addresses it to her hands, and in her peripheral vision, Grant tenses further. “I didn’t—I wouldn’t have—” She flounders, unsure what she means to say, and gives up. “I’m so sorry, Grant.”

“Yeah,” he says quietly. “Me too.”

Her vision blurs with tears at his tone; she closes her eyes as she fights for composure, and thus misses the moment in which Grant moves and comes to kneel before her. She nearly jumps out of her skin when his hands cup her face.

Eyes flying open, she startles back, but he holds her easily in place—as much by the darkness in his gaze as the strength of his hands.

“Don’t do it again,” he says.

Then he kisses her.

It’s deep and urgent and possessive—everything she’s been longing for since the first harsh word she threw at him. And though there’s anger in the kiss, his hands stay gentle on her skin, thumbs sweeping familiar paths along her jaw.

For the first time since Coulson presented the idea of going undercover in HYDRA, Jemma dares to hope they’ll be all right.


	59. things you said after we fell in love

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> anonymous asked: "things you said after we fell in love <3"

“I am sorry, you know.”

“Hmm?” Jemma blinks up at him, brows still wrinkled in confusion over the report she’s been tutting over for the last hour. Her ponytail’s coming unraveled—no surprise, the way she tugs on it while she reads—and she shoves some hair out of her eyes with an impatient noise. “Did you say something?”

“I said I’m sorry,” Grant repeats, and pushes away from him desk to join her.

His office in this base is a hell of a lot nicer than the last one; he’s got a real desk instead of a wobbly table, a full bar, and a sitting area with a great view of the river. Jemma’s taken to coming up to stretch out on his couch while she goes through her paperwork, and the extra time with her alone makes it worth all the hassle of setting up an appropriately complex web of shell companies to buy the building.

“Sorry?” she asks, obligingly lifting her feet so he can sit next to her. She smiles when he pulls them into his lap. “Whatever for?”

In answer, he reaches out to stroke her hair out of her face, letting his thumb linger on the almost invisible scar at her hairline. He can still remember when it was a fresh wound, barely scabbed over—when she came down to Vault D with an armed escort and tended to the infection the hole in his foot had developed. The whole time, they never once made eye contact; she was pointedly avoiding his gaze, but he just couldn’t look away from her forehead.

“I hurt you,” he says.

Jemma lowers her tablet to her lap slowly. “You did.”

It’s not just the scar. It’s been less than a year since he lured her away from SHIELD, but he’s held her through a lifetime’s worth of nightmares and tears and, once, even a panic attack. She’s carrying a whole boatload of trauma, and while not _all_ of it can be laid at his feet…well, _not all_ is still _some_ , and _some_ is way too damn much.

“I never wanted to,” he says. “So I’m sorry.”

Her face softens, and she pulls her legs out of his lap to fold them under her so she can lean forward.

“So am I,” she says, kissing the much larger scar at his own hairline—a remnant of his third and final suicide attempt. “But we both made our choices, and there’s no call to dwell on them now, hm?”

He snakes an arm around her waist and tugs gently, pulling her off balance until she falls, laughing, into his lap.

“No,” he agrees, “I guess not.”

When he kisses her, she kisses him back without hesitation or fear. There was plenty of both at first, but as the months have passed, she’s relaxed into him—into them—just as he hoped she would. He lets the easy way she curls into him soothe away the memories of her tensing when he touched her, of how she would jerk away before she caught herself and remembered she didn’t need to be afraid.

The guilt and the sting of them linger, invisible scars like the one he traces now, hidden by time and the fall of her hair, but he does his best to push them away.

Jemma could be anywhere in the world right now—he _offered_ her anywhere in the world—and she’s chosen to be here with him. She’s forgiven him, left their past in the past and moved on to looking toward the future.

So why can’t he do the same?


	60. things you said that made me feel like shit

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ilosttrackofthings asked: "Yessssssssss, succumb to the prompt meme, Amy. Join ussssssssssssss. biospec + things you said that made me feel like shit"

It hits Simmons first.

Later, Grant will wonder why—everything he’s ever heard says it should’ve happened simultaneously…but then, how often have both parties been in the _same room_ when it happens? Maybe there’s always a few seconds’ delay and it only gets chalked up as simultaneous because no one times it to the exact second—but in the moment, that’s all he knows: it hits her first.

It’s been nearly twenty minutes since the sobbing that followed her screaming subsided into labored breathing, and the only other sound he’s heard out of her is the occasional choked off whimper, so he nearly jumps out of his skin at her sudden scream.

He shoots to his feet, half-expecting to find she’s managed to hurt herself worse in some ill-conceived escape attempt, but she’s right where he left her. She’s curled as far forward as she can while tied to the pole, shoulders straining as she screams into her knees.

“Simmons, what the fu—”

It hits him then, a searing pain at the bottom of his ribs. It starts on the skin then burns its way through to the bone beneath, and he nearly bites through his lip holding back a scream of his own. His vision greys out and for a second he’s sure he’s about to faint—

—and then it stops.

Simmons isn’t screaming anymore. The tent is silent save for her breathing and his, and he can barely hear even that over the ringing in his ears.

Fuck.

He realizes he’s hunched over the back of his chair and straightens, pulling his shirt up as he goes to check his side. He already knows what he’s gonna see—what else could it be?—but a small, optimistic part of him is hoping for a spontaneous bullet wound or something.

No such luck. Right there on his side, exactly where the pain was concentrated, the name _Jemma Simmons_ has carved itself into his skin.

She’s his soulmate.

He just spent two hours _torturing his soulmate_.

His knees are about to give out on him; he spins the chair around and drops into it, fighting a sudden surge of nausea that only gets worse when he accidentally catches Simmons’—Jemma’s—eyes.

She’s even paler than she was before, grey around the edges and looking more than a little sick, but not a single drop of the hate that’s painted her face all night has faded. Most of her wounds are hidden away beneath her clothes, save for the bleeding cut on her face that taunts him.

“I—” He doesn’t know what to say. What _can_ he say? Her name is an ache in his skin and he’s still got some of her blood under his nails. “Jemma, I—”

“It doesn’t change anything,” she says, and the thinness of her voice turns his stomach. He did that. He _hurt_ her. His _soulmate_.

“I wouldn’t—” He can barely breathe, which isn’t helping this thing where he can’t seem to get a full sentence out. “If I’d known—”

“You’re a murderer and a monster and you just finished _torturing_ me,” she snaps. “What you _would have_ done is irrelevant.”

“I’m sorry,” he says helplessly. He feels like he’s a kid again, facing Thomas in his hospital bed and trying not to cry. How does he _always_ end up here? “Jemma, I’m so sorry.”

She closes her eyes and tips her head back against the pole, every inch of her screaming disdain.

“Well, I don’t forgive you,” she says, and doesn’t speak again.


	61. things you were afraid to say (Jemma/Hive)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "anonymous asked: things you were afraid to say - parasimmons"

The sandstorm has long since ended and dead silence has replaced the howling winds. The only sound to distract Jemma is the slow, resigned beating of her heart, and so she hears the approaching footsteps with perfect clarity. There’s only one person ( _thing_ ) to whom they could belong.

She could— _should_ —run.

But the portal has closed, taking Fitz and Brubaker with it. Her final chance of escape literally slipped through her fingers, leaving her stranded and alone countless light-years from home without even a friend to rely on any longer.

Part of her is screaming that she should at least _try_ to flee, to make her way towards the safety of the caves. The rest of her is well aware that she can’t avoid Death forever, and why delay the inevitable?

So she stays where she is and lets It approach.

“Despite the lies you’ve been told, I have no intention of hurting you.”

Her heart stutters.

No. _No_. It didn’t—It _couldn’t_ —

It circles around to crouch in front of her, giving her a good look at It for the first time ever. It’s handsome, certainly; tall and dark and sporting a tidy beard. In fact, It’s exactly her type.

Except that’s not true, is it? This isn’t what It looks like. This is Goodwin, the Air Force pilot who sacrificed his life to stop It taking Austin’s. It was months ago Brubaker told her the story, but every halting word of it echoes now in her ears. _Pointless_ , Brubaker called it. Austin killed himself scant weeks later anyway.

“Jemma?” It places a warm hand on her knee, stolen face creased in sympathy. “Did you hear me? I will not hurt you. We’re stranded here together, and now that Brubaker has abandoned you—”

It stops, frowning in concern, and Jemma realizes belatedly that she’s shaking. This—this _thing_ devastated this planet. It killed Brubaker’s team and kept him living in terror for nearly six years. It’s even terrorized _her_ , once, when she ventured into the no-fly zone and It chased her home.

It’s _evil_. But what It said…

“You’re frightened,” It says, plainly disapproving—only to pause and tilt Its head. “But not of me. Not completely.”

If ever there was a time to run, this is it. Yet she’s frozen in place by the weight of Its hand—by the weight of Its _presence_ , really.

“This fear is different, somehow,” It muses, and takes both her hands. “Will you not tell me what frightens you, Jemma? Let me ease your fears.”

She shakes her head, somehow numb and terrified at once. It might be—be what It is, but she can’t possibly tell It. It’s _evil_ , and the lovely voice It’s attempting to comfort her with isn’t Its. The voice, like the face and the body, belong to a brave man that It murdered.

Who knows what It has planned for her—or, worse, how those plans might change if It knew?

She can’t say anything. She _must_ keep her silence, no matter what.

Her resolve must show on her face, because Its gentle expression hardens into something stern.

“Do not defy me,” It warns, and then narrows Its eyes at her. “What is it? Speak.”

There’s a strange heaviness to the command, some _weight_ that presses down on her unpleasantly, and before she knows she means to, she admits, “Those were my words.”

The ability to control people with Its voice must be another of Its powers, she realizes, which only multiplies her fear. It’s a wonder Brubaker survived six years with It.

But whatever else It is, It isn’t emotionless, because her confession plainly rocks It to the core. It sits back on Its ( _Goodwin’s_ , a tiny voice reminds her) heels, expression almost comically gobsmacked.

“You—”

Its stupefaction lasts only for a moment before hungry eyes are searching her, scanning every visible inch of skin. Looking for her soulmark, she presumes, and hunches in on herself reflexively. Its first words to her are burned on the underside of her left breast, safely hidden beneath her clothes, and she has absolutely no intention of showing them to It—no matter how much they ache for Its touch.

“Oh, Jemma,” It says, and pulls her gently but firmly forward to fold her into an embrace. Her knees press awkwardly against Its, but short of shifting into Its lap—which will _not_ be happening—she has no choice but to tolerate the discomfort.

Aside from that, though, the hug itself isn’t uncomfortable. She thinks she’d prefer that it were, but in fact, it’s warm and reassuring, setting her skin to buzzing happily. For the first time in her life, the constricting weight around her heart has loosened to nearly nothing. Something deep inside of her reaches out to It, longing to be completed.

“You’re still trembling,” It murmurs in her ear.

Jemma stares straight over Its shoulder, refusing to curl into Its embrace any further. Part of her wants to hide her face in Its neck, cling to It, let Its touch soothe and comfort her. They’re the only two beings on the planet and It’s her _soulmate_.

“You’re a monster,” she says, as much to remind herself as to hurt It. “And a murderer. You _stole_ that body.”

It chuckles quietly.

“Not a monster,” It says. It presses a kiss to her temple, then sits back to smile at her, beatific and petrifying. “A god.”

“A—” She really has no idea how to respond to that.

“My name is Alveus,” It tells her, brushing her hair fondly out of her face. “And I have been waiting a very, very long time for you, my Jemma.”


	62. more than one kiss

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> aos-biospec asked: "Please More than one kiss for Biospecialist. Thank you"

Jemma’s heart pounds hard in her throat, a throbbing that reverberates through her whole body. Sweat-dampened hair is plastered to her temples, an irritation that would be simple to resolve if only her arms weren’t too heavy to lift.  She’s feeling heavy all over, in fact—heavy and sore and utterly spent.

A pressure at her hip bone prompts her to open her eyes, and she finds Grant has propped his chin there to regard her with a _very_ smug grin.

“Happy birthday, baby,” he says, hand sliding along the outside of her thigh.

In return, all Jemma manages is a pathetic sort of whine. It’s mortifying, really, but in her defense, _anyone_ would have difficulty speaking after being subject to the last few hours’ onslaught.

Grant’s grin widens; he presses a kiss to her hipbone, then crawls up along her body to straddle her. His hands rub up her sides, and she somehow finds the energy to knock one away when it wanders too close to her breast. He blinks down at her.

“You don’t want more?” he asks innocently. “Only you were saying that I should never, ever stop—in fact, I’m remembering some pretty vivid threats of what would happen if I did, so—”

“You’re terrible,” she says, giving him an embarrassingly weak shove. It does the trick, though, and Grant shifts off of her to lie beside her instead, chuckling.

“You’re welcome,” he says, pairing the words with a kiss to her cheek, and all she can do is laugh.

In the months since she and Grant began dating, they’ve had some truly spectacular sex. If she’s honest, it’s half the reason they’ve lasted this long—if not for their sexual compatibility, his frequent absences likely would have driven her to break up with him long before she got to know him well enough to realize that he’s worth the inconvenience.

Still, today has surpassed every other sexual encounter _combined_. She’s never come so hard so often (and with such short recovery periods) in her _life_.

And there Grant is, still looking as fresh and energetic as when they started—despite the fact that he had at _least_ six orgasms of his own. (She rather lost count for a while there in the middle.)

“I suppose those Asgardians did _one_ thing right, at least,” she muses, and is _absolutely positive_ that it’s only her imagination the silver staff propped in the corner gleams proudly. She’s mentally exhausted as well as physically, that’s all.

“Oh yeah?” Grant asks, pausing to nip at her shoulder as he makes himself comfortable. “You gonna put that in your report?”

She laughs, too drained to be anything but amused at the mental image of her superiors’ faces should she submit a report detailing the sexual stamina that accompanies the berserker staff’s better advertised attributes.

“No,” she says, “I don’t think so.”

In fact, she has no idea how she’s going to document this at all; certainly SHIELD needs to know that sexual activity so soundly counters the berserker rage—when they started Grant could barely _smile_ , let alone joke—but in the moment, she’s finding it difficult to think of a way to phrase it that won’t make it obvious she allowed her alien artifact-influenced boyfriend to shag her into the mattress.

“Sure I can’t interest you in another round?” said boyfriend offers, hand sliding across her stomach. The brush of his calluses over the hickies and stubble burn he’s bestowed upon her over the course of the last few hours makes her body throb anew, but—no. Even the _thought_ of another orgasm makes her cringe. “It is your birthday, after all.”

“No.” She rolls as far away from him as she can—not very, between the exhaustion still weighing her down and the relatively small bed—and buries her face in the pillow. “ _I_ am going to sleep for a week. If you really have that much energy to burn, go hit someone.”

Grant chuckles, effectively hiding the squeak of the mattress springs so she doesn’t realize he’s moving until she feels his lips at the base of her spine.

“I really _did_ wear you out, huh?” he asks, very proudly. “That’s the first time you’ve ever _encouraged_ me to beat someone up.”

He kisses her again, this time between her shoulder blades, and she sighs.

“I do believe you could kill someone in front of me and I wouldn’t care,” she admits. It’s barely even an exaggeration; beneath her exhaustion and soreness is a very pleasant buzz of sexual satisfaction. She can’t imagine getting upset about _anything_  right now.

“Good to know,” Grant says thoughtfully, and then—with one last kiss to her shoulder—pushes himself over her and to his feet. “I’ll be in the gym if you need me.”

Jemma hums agreeably, closing her eyes as he pulls the covers up over her. Her body is beginning to protest her position—her breasts especially do not appreciate being flattened against the mattress after the attention they’ve enjoyed and/or suffered (depending on one’s perspective) today—but she can’t quite muster up the energy to roll over.

Whatever else can be said—about the berserker staff, the reporting difficulties she has ahead of her, or her fairly low chances of being able to walk tomorrow—this is most certainly the best birthday she’s ever had.


	63. collarbone kiss (Jemma/Hive)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thestarfishdancer asked: "Parasimmons and collarbone kiss, please and thank you!"

The day has been terrible and painful and looks only to be getting worse.

As if being tortured for hours (by two separate men, one of whom she used to call friend), only to eventually see Fitz forced to jump into one of her worst nightmares, wasn’t bad enough, SHIELD’s arrival has sent Malick running scared. And apparently he isn’t done with Jemma yet, as he’s dragged her along with him.

She was _so close_ to escape (or rescue), but now she’s trapped in a car with a man who worships _It_. Every second takes her farther away from the castle and, more importantly, answers. Will Fitz make it back alive? Will _Will_?

Of course, her own survival is rather in question, as well. She doesn’t know why Malick wants her alive, why he took the time to gather her before fleeing the castle…but whatever his reasons, they can’t be good.

The car slows suddenly, drawing her out of her increasingly grim thoughts. Next to her (and isn’t that just the definition of adding insult to injury, that she’s been forced to share a backseat with _him_ ), Malick leans forward.

“Is that…?” he asks, tone far from the arrogance and condescension that have thus far dominated her interactions with him.

It’s enough to spark her curiosity (an impressive feat, when everything she’s feeling is buried under so many layers of agony), and she tips her head against the window to see past the headrest of the seat in front of her.

Her heart doesn’t only sink, it _falls_ , and her stomach drops with it. “Oh, no.”

It’s Ward—but it’s _not_ Ward. It looks like him, certainly, albeit a him that’s stumbled off the set of a horror film. But even from this distance, she can sense the wrongness in him. A familiar weight wraps itself around her mind, muffling the horror that has overtaken her.

She knows this weight, this _wrongness_. It haunted her for six and half terrible months.

Malick’s chauffer is scrambling out of the car, followed shortly by Malick himself. If Jemma weren’t cuffed to the door, she might be doing the same—if only to run as far and as fast as she can in the opposite direction. But cuffed she is, and her legs would likely fail her, anyway.

That isn’t Ward. It’s _It_ , the creature that terrorized them on the planet—that _devastated_ the planet. The monster Malick worships, the so-called god he spent nearly an hour rhapsodizing about after Fitz and Ward left…

Fitz. _Will_. What happened to them? If the creature has made it to Earth, does that mean they have as well? Or did it kill them as it (apparently) killed Ward?

Grief at even the _possibility_ rises up to choke her, but there’s no time for tears. The door opposite hers opens and the creature collapses into Malick’s abandoned seat. Terror overwhelms her; she scrambles for the door handle, but before she can—what? What is she even planning to _do_?—the creature is shifting towards her, closing the small distance that separates them.

“No,” she says—sobs. She doesn’t even know what she’s rejecting, but, “ _No_.”

It gives a labored sigh as it reaches her, and then its hands— _Ward’s_ hands—are on her. Pure panic (whether at its touch or the memory of Ward’s) steals the sense from her, and the next thing she knows, she’s been maneuvered into the creature’s _lap_.

Disgust chills her so thoroughly as to freeze her; she can’t even _try_ to pull away. The creature nuzzles against her, wearing a smile that doesn’t at all fit Ward’s face.

“No,” she manages again, weakly.

The creature frowns, eyeing the cut on her cheek. It reaches for it, and she cries out when her instinctive flinch sends fire racing through her veins. She’s thawed enough to feel the agony of her wounds once more, and whether because of her movement or because the one who inflicted some of them is (in a sense) present, said agony has only increased.

Its frown deepens. For a moment, its eyes slide away, focusing in on the middle distance; when it looks back, there’s something like apology in its face.

But no. That’s her imagination, surely. And the thought that its apology looks somehow like Will’s—that’s pure delusion.

It has to be.

The creature touches her cheek briefly— _fondly_ —and then hooks Ward’s fingers in the collar of her shirt. Memory holds her in place far more effectively than the handcuffs or even the arm around her waist (Ward tore her apart and then pieced her back together, hands still stained with her blood turned gentle as he saw to her wounds, his tender touch just one more torture to endure) as the creature pulls her sweater aside to reveal her bandaged collarbone.

There’s a cut there—long, deep, positioned perfectly so as to be irritated by every single shirt she owns. She’ll be forced to keep it bandaged until it’s fully healed, an inconvenience made worse by the truth that she can’t imagine she’ll be able to tend to it without remembering in full detail the moment it was inflicted.

The creature frowns at the bandage—bloodstained, she realizes; the cut has reopened—and then presses freezing lips to the skin just above it. Jemma’s stomach turns.

“What are you doing?” she asks. (A better question would perhaps be what has It done—to Will, to Fitz, to her team back at the castle—but she can’t quite force herself to voice it.) “What do you _want_?”

It doesn’t answer. It only rests its head on her shoulder and hugs her close.


	64. five minute drabble collection three

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another collection of five minute drabbles. This chapter has Skye/Ward, Jemma/Hive,

_agenthaywood asked: "skyeward + "either put the gun down or take your pants off""_

Skye’s been waiting a while, so she’s had plenty of time to imagine how Ward might react to finding her in his apartment. But this is Ward; of _course_  he throws her for a loop.

“What did you just say to me?” she demands.

“I sad, either put the gun down or take your pants off,” Ward repeats impatiently. For a guy with a fully loaded 9mm aimed square at his forehead, he doesn’t seem too concerned.

Aaaaaand it’s not longer aimed square at his forehead, because he’s turned away to shrug out of his jacket and then—oh, God—strip off his shirt.

“What are you _doing_?!” That is _not_  a squeak in Skye’s voice. It’s not. She is a professional, a fully (well, okay, _mostly_ ) trained agent of SHIELD. Her voice does not squeak.

“Look, the cat and mouse thing was fun for a while,” he says, “and don’t get me wrong, you make an effective—and very hot—field agent. But I’ve had a long day and I’m not in the mood to play around.”

“Who says I’m playing?” she asks, adjusting her aim as faces her again. “You think I don’t have what it takes to pull the trigger?”

She hates him a little for smiling—hates that it _is_  a smile. He’s _always_  got a smile for her. He’s been a total jerk to the others since he turned, but with her, he’s fond and amused and never condescending. She _hates_  that her stupid heart still leaps when he aims those eyes at her.

“Oh, I know you do,” he says, and suddenly he’s in her space, looming over her. It should feel like a threat, but it really, really doesn’t. “Just not on me.”

It takes her a second to gather herself; when she does, she jams her gun against his ribs. “You think I can’t shoot you?”

“I think you _won’t_ ,” he says. He’s standing so close her hair stirs as he breathes, putting all of her nerves on edge. “And we both know I’m right.”

He is, damn him.

 

 

 

_thestarfishdancer asked: "Parasimmons and heart, please and thank you!"_

In a sea of unsettling changes, Alveus’ heartbeat is like a life preserver of familiarity. Everything else is different, but the slow, steady rhythm of his heart is unchanged. It’s more than a relief; it’s a single bright spot, the only one—aside from the fact that Alveus survived at all—she’s yet found.

She closes her eyes, attempting to block out the rest of the world with his slowly beating heart. Unfortunately, this attempt, as all the others were, is doomed to failure.

His heartbeat is beautifully familiar. But the scent of his skin and the touch of his hands are familiar, too, and not in a good way. The hand he runs down her back, undoubtedly meant to soothe her, only serves to make her tense.

“You don’t like this body?” Alveus asks—and his voice, too, is horribly familiar. She hides her face in his chest. “Jemma.”

Jemma shakes her head. Alveus keeps his vessels’ memories; she’s certain that by now he’s discovered her sordid history with Ward, from start to finish—the way he took advantage of her feelings for him on the Bus, the cruel way he discarded her after his cover was broken, and the joy he took in taunting her after his escape from Vault D.

All of that is in Alveus’ head, now. Jemma sees no need to voice any of it.

“You’re displeased,” he says heavily.

His tone—even in such a hated voice—tugs at her heartstrings. “I’m glad you’re here. Ward’s just…isn’t the body I’d have chosen for you.”

She’ll take any body over _no_  body, though—over no _him_. The months they’ve spent apart have killed her; it’s been torture, being without him, being _stranded_  on Earth with nothing but useless star charts and a handful of inert rocks.

Hiding from him just because she dislikes the man he’s wearing feels suddenly petty and ungrateful.

“I’m glad you’re here,” she says again, and—steeling herself against unpleasant memories—pushes herself up to meet his eyes. ( _Ward’s_  eyes. They’re wide and a little sad, the way they were so often on the Bus, and the sight of them twists her stomach into painful knots.) “It will take time to adjust, that’s all. Can you give me time?”

“Of course,” Alveus says, face softening. His fingers brush her cheek on the way to burying themselves in her hair, and it sets her skin to burning. “Take all the time you need.”

He guides her head to rest on his chest again, sparing her the sight of Ward’s face, but he can’t stop her other senses. Jemma closes her eyes, holds her breath, and tries again to let his heartbeat drown out the rest of the world.

 

 

 

_thestarfishdancer asked: "For the five minute Drabble, may I pretty please get biospecialist and "satisfied"?"_

Grant’s the very definition of a light sleeper, and even if he weren’t, the heavy metal doors in this place are damn loud. There was never any chance he was gonna sleep through his bedroom door opening in the middle of the night.

He doesn’t bother to pretend he has, either, just pushes himself up on his elbow to squint at his visitor. His stomach goes tight with…something. He can’t make out her face, not when she’s back-lit by the bright lights in the hall, but he’d recognize Jemma if he were deaf and blindfolded.

“Something wrong, baby?” he asks.

She closes the door, plunging his room back into darkness. The same something that’s tightened his stomach has his heart pounding in his ears, but he can still hear the quiet _clank_ of the lock sliding into place.

“No,” Jemma says, only to immediately prove herself a liar by climbing into bed with him.

He’s too stunned to resist the little shove she gives his shoulder—and thankful for it, as once she’s pushed him onto his back, she snuggles up under his arm. She makes herself comfortable as casually as if it’s a year ago, tucking her freezing toes beneath his shin like she didn’t give him a death glare for speaking in her presence just this afternoon.

He doesn’t even know where to start asking about this, so he lets his tone do the questioning for him. “Jemma?”

“Is there a problem?” she asks. Her own tone is unconcerned, but he can feel the tension in the limbs she’s wrapped around him.

“Not at all,” he says. “You know you’re always welcome in my bed. It’s just…been a while.”

Been a while since she treated him with anything but disdain, that is. The rest of the team’s forgiven him (mostly), but Jemma—the one person whose forgiveness he actually cares about, the whole reason he’s even _here_ —has made it clear she’s not letting go of her grudge anytime soon.

But he knew going in it’d be a fight to get her good opinion, let alone her love, back, and he’s been patient. Which is why having her show up and help herself to his bed in the middle of the night is such a surprise—an _excellent_ one, but still.

“My room is cold,” she says, almost challengingly—like she’s daring him to call her on what a lame excuse that is. “Yours is warmer.”

Thankfully, while Grant’s a lot of things, stupid isn’t one of them. So he doesn’t take her up on that challenge; he just says “Fair enough,” and risks pulling her a little closer.

She relaxes into him, going boneless and content the way she used to after a few rounds of really fantastic sex, and he’s gotta admit, it’s damn good for his ego. Maybe she’s missed being in his bed as much as he’s missed having her here.

Cheered by that thought (not that he needs cheering when Jemma’s cuddled so happily into his side), he drops a kiss to her hair. The last time he tried to kiss her, she slapped him; now, she just nuzzles against his chest with a sleepy mumble.

He only waits until her breathing evens out to drop back into sleep himself. It’s the best night he’s had in a long, long time.


	65. water

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> anonymous asked: "biospec and water for the soulmates meme"

“So,” Ward says, voice a bit tentative, “this probably isn’t the best time to bring this up….”

“Really?” Jemma asks, even as she snuggles closer to him. It was only practical to discard her jumper, considering how thick it was—far too thick to be dried by the sun in any timely manner—but her blouse is thin and just as soaked as the rest of her; she’s freezing. “You don’t think bobbing together in the middle of the ocean is a good time for conversation?”

“I always pictured something a little more romantic,” he says, and the rare smile she can hear in his voice distracts her long enough that she doesn’t process that last word until he’s already continued, “but hi, I’m your soulmate.”

“I— _what_?”

His arms tighten around her as she starts to rear back to look at him, holding her in place. It puzzles her until she remembers just how tiny this raft is. Any significant movement will see her tumble right back into the water, which is the last thing this day needs.

“Sorry,” she says, patting his chest in thanks. “But really, _what_?”

“Comparing marks’ll have to wait until we reach dry land,” he says regretfully. “But I got mine a few minutes before you jumped. Didn’t have time to check it, obviously, but I looked while you were out and….it’s your name.”

“I—” Her head is swimming. “I didn’t feel….”

But she did, didn’t she? Even as the buzzing was overwhelming her, as she realized the end was coming and resolved to jump, she was hurting. She assumed it was just another side effect of the virus—only, in retrospect, it was concentrated in one specific area, just beneath her ribs.

Without lifting her head—it’s feeling abnormally heavy, likely due to exhaustion but possibly as a result of her recent brush with death—she slides her hand up Ward’s side until he sucks in a breath.

“Here?” she asks.

He finds the same place on her side, and the brush of his fingers sends a jolt of heat straight through her, chasing away the last of the ocean’s chill. Jemma can’t help it; she moans a little.

“Yeah,” Ward—Grant—her _soulmate_ —says unnecessarily. “Right there.”

“Well, then.” She doesn’t know what to say. She always thought she’d have plenty, that she’d have to work to keep herself from overwhelming her soulmate at first—but then she never expected her soulmate to be someone she already knew: a teammate, a _friend_ , who’s only just saved her life. 

That’s a thought. Thanks bubble up in her throat again, but as he’s already told her four times to stop it with the thanks—and, in fact, threatened to shove her off the raft if she did it again—she reaches for a joking tone instead.

“I guess it’s a good thing you jumped after me, then.”

“Very good,” he agrees, pairing the words with a kiss to her hair that steals her voice entirely.

She wants to look at him, to see his face—but her head is so heavy and her neck is so sore, even the thought of such movement is enough to make her cringe. And in any case, he’s always been so reticent, so awkward with even the verbal suggestion of affection; she’ll bet he’s embarrassed by what he’s just done. It’s kinder, surely, to stay as she is.

So she doesn’t look at him and doesn’t speak. She just keeps her hand over his mark— _her_  mark, her name written in his skin and his soul—and lets her joy and excitement fill up all the empty spaces the last few hours’ fear carved into her.


	66. hot (Jemma/Robbie)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> anonymous asked: "Robbie and Jemma and hot for the soulmate meme"

“Watch your hand, that burner’s hot.”

The man—a complete stranger to Jemma, not that _that’s_ unusual these days; Mace has a seemingly endless supply of new faces—freezes, hand inches from the burner. For a moment, he’s utterly still, and she moves closer, wondering if he’s in some form of distress.

Then he turns, and she stops, feeling foolish as she recognizes him. It’s Daisy’s new friend, the one with some manner of fire powers. He caught that flaming chain of James’ without even blinking; of course he doesn’t need to worry about a hot stove.

“Yeah,” he says, with a wry sort of smile. “Not really a problem for me.”

Now it’s _her_ turn to freeze, because those words—oh, but such common, casual words, it doesn’t necessarily mean…

Except he’s nodding at her reaction and tugging the collar of his shirt aside, and before she even means to move she’s in front of him, tracing over the words—her words—on his clavicle. The loop of the y, the curl of the a—they’re her words in her handwriting on _her_ soulmate.

“Oh,” she says, a touch faintly. His skin is warm, though not as warm as she’d expect, and seems to buzz beneath her fingers. “I suppose I owe Daisy an apology.”

It’s such an inane thing to say upon meeting her soulmate, she’s instantly embarrassed, but he—bless him—is kind enough to go with it.

“Why’s that?”

“I’ve been a bit unkind,” she admits. “She left us and we’ve been so worried, and then to have her teaming up with strangers while still disdaining our help…” Realizing that she’s still stroking his soulmark, she drops her hand and steps back at once. “I’m sorry, I know we were introduced, but my ears were still ringing from that explosion. Is it Ray?”

“Robbie Reyes,” he corrects, face unreadable. His eyes are dark with _something_ , but she simply doesn’t know enough about him to guess at what that something might be. Is he happy to have met her? Annoyed that she got his name wrong? Angry that she is what she is—a SHIELD agent?

“Jemma Simmons,” she says, offering her hand. His lips turn up a little as he takes it; that’s something. “I’d show you my mark, but it’s…” She looks around the kitchen, finds it empty, and yet still can’t bring herself to speak her soulmark’s location aloud. “Well, I’m afraid it’s going to have to wait until we’re _much_  better acquainted.”

Robbie outright grins at that, and Jemma’s heart leaps.

If she were wise, she would put some distance between them—let go of his hand and sit at the table and start a polite conversation, keep her guard up until she’s had time to get a sense of him. Her heart has always been hasty, and in the face of her soulmate it’s sure to be especially vulnerable.

She shouldn’t be incautious here. All she knows about him is that he saved her life last night and that he’s friends with Daisy…but that’s plenty, isn’t it? Surely Daisy’s friendship is in itself a ringing endorsement.

In any case, she’s _tired_ of being wise—of being _cautious_. SHIELD has fractured again and the team with it; she’s spent the last seven months on the edge, and she’s ready to be off of it.

What better to throw herself into than her soulmate?


	67. five sentence part eight

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You know the drill, right? Right.
> 
> This chapter contains Jemma/Hive, Jemma/Skye, and two Jemma/Grants.

_anonymous asked: "You weren't supposed to find out this way. Or at all."_

“I don’t doubt it,” Hive says mildly.

Scott is still prostrate on the ground, to which he threw himself when Hive first walked in. Hive looks down at him, blank-faced, and then back at Jemma.

“You don’t care for him,” he says certainly.

“If I did, I would never have let him touch me,” she says.

It’s the truth. She’s been desperate for any kind of release, wound to agonizing levels of desire by a constant barrage of seduction from Hive, but she knew that she’d be dooming anyone she sought out for satisfaction. Scott is handsome, fantastic at sex, and notable as the man who very nearly killed Daisy last month. Jemma won’t mourn his passing at all—in fact, she’s almost been looking forward to it.

Hive tips his head. “I see.”

Almost casually, he extends a hand towards Scott, and in seconds, there’s nothing left of Jemma’s lover but bones. It’s just as satisfying as she expected—which does a little to make up for the fact that Hive interrupted before they got anywhere good.

His eyes drag over her, taking in the fading love bites on her collarbone and the still-dark bruises on her thighs. The weight of his gaze sends a shiver through her, but she makes no move to cover herself. Let him look his fill. Let him see the marks she allowed another man to leave, even as she disdained _his_  every touch.

“How long?” he asks, and now, now a hint of the fury she expected shows through. It’s exhilarating

“Three weeks.”

Hive’s jaw ticks. For a moment, he reminds her so much of Ward—Ward on the last day of his life, when he tore her apart for answers that ended up dooming him—that she can’t even breathe.

Then his expression eases and the moment passes.

“I blame myself,” he says lightly. “I’ve given you too much freedom, of course. And I haven’t made my intentions clear enough to those who worship me.” He sweeps her with another glance, then turns away. “Get dressed.”

“And then?” she asks, dread starting to creep in around the edges of triumph.

“And then,” he says, “your things will be moved to my room, in which you will have plenty of time to repent for your infidelity.”

Her dread fades. That’s not so bad. He’s had her moved to his room before—namely, every time she tries to escape—and while spending a few nights being _cuddled_  by the monster who killed Will is hardly enjoyable, she’s certainly suffered worse.

“For how long?” she asks, mind already turning over which of the guards she might replace Scott with. A few nights—or more than a few, considering his phrasing—in Hive’s bed will leave her in desperate need of a new sex buddy.

The pleasant smile Hive gives her over his shoulder has all of her previous dread—and more—rushing back.

“Forever,” he says. 

 

 

 

_agenthaywood asked: "You cannot eat 1,000 chicken nuggets."_

“Wanna bet?” Skye asks brightly.

“No,” Jemma says. “No, I do not.”

“You sure? Because I would _love_  to prove you—”

“Please do not eat 1,000 chicken nuggets,” Jemma amends. “It’s excessive and ridiculous and we both know you’d only be doing it to prove a point.”

Skye pouts. “But I love proving points.”

“I know you do,” Jemma says, patting her on the shoulder. “Perhaps you could prove a different point? Like your ability to get through this mission without drawing undue attention?”

The look Skye gives her is full of both pity and amusement…which likely has something to do with Jemma just referring to her cousin’s wedding as a mission. Jemma refuses to let her embarrassment show.

“Fine,” Skye says. “But just checking—being your fake girlfriend gets me _real_ sex at the end of the night, right?”

Jemma tries and utterly fails to contain a smile. “Stay away from the chicken nuggets and we’ll see.”

 

 

 

_a nonymous asked: "I'm taking a vow of celibacy."_

“Um, okay,” Ward says, alerting Jemma to the fact that she’s not alone in the lounge. Bloody typical, that. “Any…particular reason?”

“Semi-decent sex is just not worth _this_ ,” she informs him, gesturing with her phone.

He blinks up at her, looking attractively puzzled from his place on the couch. There’s an open book in his lap, but for the first time in months she feels no particular urge to push it aside and take its place. 

That’s a bright spot, at least. The whole reason she decided to go out on their last weekend off was to work her attraction to Ward out of her system. It’s nice to see that it worked—even if more through aversion therapy than any kind of getting over him.

“Worth what?” he asks, when she makes no move to explain.

In response, she drops her phone onto the couch next to him and retreats to the bar to grab a beer. She’s only just got it opened when she hears a strangled noise from Ward, which she takes to mean he’s reached the point in the string of texts from her one-night stand that decided her on celibacy.

“Wow,” he says, as she returns to the couch to sit beside him. “That’s…something.”

“Mm,” she agrees. “And thus, my vow.”

There’s a long moment of quiet between them, as Jemma drinks her beer (and thinks longingly of the moonshine the chemists at the Sandbox perfected years ago, which is much stronger and much tastier than anything stocked on the Bus) and Ward contemplates the texts.

“Semi-decent?” he asks eventually, surprising her. And himself, if the suddenly sheepish cast to his expression is any indication. “Sorry, sorry, it’s none of my—”

“An exaggeration,” she says over him. She’s discovered that the best way to deal with an embarrassed Ward is to just continue on like she hasn’t noticed his state. Otherwise, he’ll just get more and more awkward. “In fact, it was barely tolerable. As you might guess from the texts, he had no idea what he was doing.”

“Ah.”

“Not that I mind giving a sexual partner a little direction, mind,” she feels compelled to add. Ward’s eyebrows go up. “But there’s a difference between being in charge and drawing a bloody _map_.”

“Right,” he says.

“And I was _nice_ ,” she says. “I didn’t tell him what an utter disappointment he was, just that there was room for improvement. And now he won’t stop _texting_  me. It’s been weeks of that—and for what? A single orgasm so quick it barely even counted? It hardly even feels as though my dry spell’s been broken.”

“I could take care of that, if you want,” Ward offers.

Jemma nearly chokes on her beer. Ward squeezes his eyes shut, appearing in pain.

“The texting,” he clarifies quickly. “I just meant—if you want me to scare this guy off so he stops texting, I could do that.”

“Thank you,” she says. To her pride, she doesn’t at all sound like she’s now contemplating all the ways Ward could break her dry spell (many of them on this very couch), even though she certainly is. “I’d appreciate that.”

He gives her a conspiratorial grin and, after a few quick taps at the screen, brings her phone to his ear.

“Any limits?” he asks—the usual question when she, Fitz, or Skye recruits him to be scary on their behalf, which he started asking after the second time he was yelled at for threatening a civilian with maiming.

Jemma thinks of the endless string of texts and the fact that her lack of sexual urges towards Ward didn’t even last for an entire conversation. “Not a one.”

 

 

 

_a nonymous asked: "For the 5 sentence meme:"You know, you’re hot when you’re angry.”"_

Grant doesn’t even get the last syllable out before he has to dodge to avoid being hit in the face with a very heavy lamp.

“You stay away from me, you—you _bastard_!” Jemma snaps, taking another swing.

Okay, so humor wasn’t the way to go; sue him. (He probably should’ve figured, but come on. It’s reflex.) He catches Jemma’s wrist and spins her, trapping her against his chest so he can yank the lamp away from her. 

“Let me go!” she demands, flailing uselessly. 

He’s got a wrist in each hand, keeping her arms crossed over her stomach so she can’t try to hit him again, and she’s too short to slam her head back into his face (although it doesn’t stop her from trying). All she can really do is stomp on his instep—which she does give a good go, but since she’s barefoot and he’s not, it doesn’t do much.

In short, as long as he holds her like this, she can’t hurt him. Problem is, the longer he holds her the harder she fights, and as good a show as she’s putting on, he knows it’s not rage fueling her.

She’s terrified.

“You need to calm down,” he tries, but he knows it’s useless even _before_  she responds by trying again to headbutt him. “This isn’t what you think—”

“If you don’t let go _this instant_ , I’m going to—”

He lets go. She’s so stunned she doesn’t even react at first, giving him time to escape into the living room and close the door. Blocking it takes a little longer (he ends up fetching an appropriately heavy dining room chair), but either it takes her that long to recover or she’s just content not to be in the same room as him, because she doesn’t give chase.

That doesn’t stop her from pounding on the door and yelling some very creative threats at him when she realizes she’s trapped, though.

“So,” Holly says, kind of faintly, from her spot on the couch. “That went…well.”

Peter’s curled in Holly’s lap, looking more than a little traumatized. “Is Mommy okay?”

“She’s fine,” Grant promises. The second he sits down, Peter’s climbing into his lap and Holly’s cuddling into his side, but as nice as it is to get such a positive reaction after _that_  whole scene, it does nothing for his calm.“You remember she hit her head yesterday?”

“Uh huh,” Peter says. 

Holly, fourteen years old and way too smart for her own good, just hides her face in Grant’s shoulder. He wraps an arm around her and hugs her close. She knows enough about his and Jemma’s history to have figured out what’s going on; he’s honestly sorry for that.

“Well, sometimes if you hit your head hard enough, it can make you forget stuff,” he says, tapping Peter’s forehead for emphasis. Peter wrinkles his nose in response, knocking the breath out of Grant with how much he looks like Jemma. “Right now, Mommy doesn’t remember that she and I are married. She’s mad because she doesn’t know what she’s doing here.”

A half truth at best, but his six-year-old doesn’t need to know that Jemma took waking up half-naked in his bed as a threat. Hell, he wishes _he_  didn’t know.

It’s been a long damn time since Jemma was scared of him. There’ve been times he thought he missed those days (god knows it’d be easier to keep her out of the field if threats did anything but make her laugh); he knows now he was out of his damn mind.

“Did she forget forever?” Peter asks, voice going a little too high at the end. If he cries, Grant’s gonna—well, he doesn’t know exactly. Everyone involved in Jemma’s injury is already dead…but he’s sure he can find _someone_  to punish.

“Of course not.” Holly peeks worriedly up at Grant as she speaks, belying her confident tone. “Right, Dad?”

“Right,” he says. “Everything’s gonna be fine, okay? I can fix this.”

Markham’s been hanging back near the front door, keeping out of it, but at that he raises a skeptical eyebrow. Grant grimaces in return and hugs his kids close, hoping Jemma won’t prove him a liar.


	68. gold (Jemma/Hive)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> anonymous asked: "soulmates meme: jemma/hive and gold"

Alveus doesn’t care for dark places. He does not _fear_  them—he fears nothing—but after so long trapped in the dark hell to which he was banished, he prefers the light by far.

Jemma, though she spent only half a year on Maveth, is much the same.

He would kill any who dared to lay eyes on her like this, bare skin glowing in the golden light, but if she gives any thought to the possibility of being seen, she doesn’t show it. She only tips her head back, smiling in the warmth of the sun, and spreads her arms wide.

Her happiness echoes through his veins like a song.

“You’re pleased?” he asks, though he hardly needs to. She’s naked and straddling him and radiating joy. It’s a far cry from the sullen pain he’s become accustomed to since their return.

“Very,” she says. “It’s beautiful.”

It truly is—though even a sprawling, sunlit garden filled with color pales in comparison to her. He considers saying so, but thinks better of it; she sometimes reacts oddly to compliments given in his new voice, and it would be a shame to ruin this moment. 

Instead, he reaches up to touch her face, drawing her attention back to him. Her hands fall to rest on his chest, and their bond thrums as her smile grows wicked.

“Oh, have I been neglecting you?” she asks, shifting her hips just so. He hisses in a breath; he is millennia old and learned long ago to control his base urges, but even stone would be moved by such cruel temptation. “That’s not very nice of me, is it?” 

“No,” he agrees. They were close to joining when she became distracted as the clouds moved to reveal the sun, and though her joy is a sight to behold, his physical discomfort is…pressing.

“Let me make it up to you,” she breathes, and proceeds to do so admirably.


	69. luke verse sentence fics

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ten two to five sentence fics relating to [the luke verse](http://shineyma.tumblr.com/tagged/verse%3A-canon-one-night-stand/chrono), as requested by anonymous.

**burn**

Jemma clings tight to her composure for hours. Through escaping Providence, rescuing Skye, and an unbearably long shopping trip for the basic necessities, she somehow presents a perfectly calm façade to the team. She even manages to fool herself a bit; that night, as tepid water runs over the bruises and stubble burn that mar her breasts, she’s almost _surprised_ to find herself crying.

The shower isn’t quite loud enough to drown out her sobbing, she doesn’t think, but Skye doesn’t say anything when Jemma finally exits the bathroom (fully dressed, of course). Jemma returns the favor and pretends not to notice Skye’s red-rimmed eyes.

 

**reveal**

“What, suddenly you don’t like me?” Ward asks, voice low and intimate in her ear as he circles behind her. She’s aware, vaguely, of Fitz fighting the guards holding him in place, but all of her focus has narrowed to Ward—the timbre of his voice, the heat of his body, the feather-light brush of his fingers against her neck.

Then those fingers hook in the collar of her shirt and tug it down, and her focus snaps back to Fitz just in time to catch the horrified betrayal on his face as he stares at the hickey Ward is thumbing.

“You liked me just fine when I was giving you this,” Ward says smugly, “and that was _me_ , not the cover you’re pretending to be sad I’m not. Give it up, sweetheart; we both know you’re not sorry that guy isn’t real.”

 

**holiday**

Fitz is dragged away and locked in the Cage, but Jemma is afforded no such reprieve. Garrett speaks endlessly, offering both rewards and dire warnings about the consequences of refusing to cooperate; not a single threat he makes, however, comes close to being as frightening as the absently fond way Ward touches her throughout it all.

 

**animal**

Like a dog with a bone, Ward returns again and again to the topic of their previous encounters.

“Luke wasn’t just another cover,” he says, “he was me—the _real_ me. And you liked him a hell of a lot better than you did the show I put on for SHIELD.”

“Luke was a handsome stranger I met in a bar; _you’re_ a traitor,” she snaps back. “The man I thought you were might have bored me to death, but I’d take him over you any day.”

 

**sky**

Jemma never finds out what on earth prompts the HYDRA grunt to lower the cargo ramp mid-flight; all she knows is that one moment she’s in the lab, reluctantly going over her research into the GH-325 with Garrett’s scientists, and the next she’s back in October, the wind roaring in her ears and the Bus shrinking in her view as she falls farther and farther away from it, plummeting towards certain doom.

When she comes back to herself, she’s in Ward’s lap, held securely now in the same arms that saved her then. He hugs her close and murmurs soothing words as she sobs, so comforting that it takes her nearly five full minutes to remember that he’s the enemy now.

She pushes him away, shoves to her feet, and finds her gaze arrested on the blood splattered across the bay floor.

“He won’t scare you again,” Ward says, calm tone almost as terrifying as thirty-thousand feet of open air.

 

**care**

“I don’t give a damn about Fitz; you can have him,” Ward offers. The fight has reached a lull, though Jemma doesn’t dare think it’s safe to make a break for it just because there are no punches being thrown. “But I’m keeping Jemma.”

“The _hell_ you are,” is May’s unamused response, and the fight resumes.

 

**vintage**

The polygraph is standard procedure, or so Agent ( _Billy_ ) Koenig claims—a uniform protocol for _all_ of Fury’s secret bases, whether relatively new (like Providence) or decades old (like the Playground). Still, Jemma can’t help but wonder whether the entire team is being forced to undergo a second round of questioning, or if it’s a requirement only for her, newly revealed as she is to have let a traitor touch her.

She doesn’t ask.

 

**test**

Missing her period sends her into a spiral of panic that only abates when four separate pregnancy tests come back negative. Even so, she feels as though she doesn’t breathe at all until her cycle proceeds precisely according to schedule the next month.

 

**alone**

Ward insists he’ll speak only to her, and Jemma has amends to make—both for buckling in the face of Garrett’s threats and for the never mentioned, but certainly remembered, crime of sleeping with a murderer. She hates every second she spends in his presence, of course, but it would hardly count as penance if she enjoyed it, now would it?

So she bites her tongue on the pleas that want to slip out and obeys Coulson every time he orders her to Vault D. The only mercy is that her time there is recorded; there’s no need for her to make a report about what Ward shares. Once she gathers the intel they need from him, she’s free to flee to her room, to shelter in privacy until she escapes the memory of his welcoming smile and adoring words.

 

**morning**

The worst part of visiting Ward in Vault D isn’t speaking to him, looking at him, or even the memories he deliberately stirs up. It’s that she revisits those memories in her dreams and wakes, always, longing desperately for the absolute last man she should want.


	70. sentences (Robbie/Jemma)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ten two to five sentence fics about Robbie/Jemma, as requested by anonymous.

**burn**

Jemma runs into the Rider halfway through her daring escape.

“Oh,” she says, and then, “Wait, no, don’t you _dare_. You are not to kill these men; I’m not hurt.”

For a man—being?—whatever—without eyes, the weight of his gaze manages nevertheless to be searing as he takes in the blood caked at her temple.

“Not _seriously_ hurt,” she amends. “I don’t need vengeance, I need _Robbie_.”

He pauses, seeming to consider this, and then he’s gone; the distance between them goes with him, and Jemma allows herself a long, long moment of clinging to her boyfriend (and enjoying the way he clings in return) before she pushes away—after all, they’re still in the heart of the enemy base, and it would be a shame for her captors to corner them and have to die when she’s just gone to the trouble of saving their lives.

 

**test**

“So whatever happened to those daily lie detector tests?” Daisy asks out of nowhere.

Her doctor friend smiles. “Don’t worry; the director and I worked things out.”

Robbie has no idea what they’re talking about and forgets the conversation within minutes; Daisy’s friend’s quietly pleased little smile, on the other hand, sticks in his mind for hours.

 

**holiday**

Jemma spending Christmas with him and Gabe is awesome and all, but Robbie can’t help but notice something’s missing. She gets chatty after a few cups of heavily spiked eggnog and starts reminiscing—Christmas with her team, Christmas at the SHIELD Academy, one Christmas in a rainforest when she and another scientist got drunk and tried to decorate a _socratea exorrhiza_ (whatever that is) and nearly got killed by local fauna—and as fun as her stories are…

She never mentions her parents, not once. Never calls them, either; her team, yeah (Daisy calls every day, just to bug him), but not her parents.

He tells the swelling fire in his chest not to jump to conclusions—lots of people aren’t close with their parents; that the only thing she’s ever said about them is that they’re _alive_ doesn’t mean shit—but once the devil takes notice, he don’t forget, and when Gabe joins in with a story or two about better times with tío, he doesn’t like the quiet misery on Jemma’s face any more than Robbie does.

 

**sky**

Aside from accepting her thanks for saving her and promising her he wasn’t hurt, Robbie hasn’t even said ten words to Agent Simmons. So he’s not really sure what to think about her sudden death grip on his sleeve.

“You okay?” he asks, and she lets go like she’s been burned.

“So sorry,” she says, smiling apologetically, “the turbulence caught me by surprise—” she glances at the bay door with a grimace “—and I don’t do well with it. Skydiving accident.”

“Oh,” he says, and as she hurries away, he has to slip his hands in his pockets; he has the weirdest urge to pull her back.

 

**vintage**

“This,” Simmons says breathlessly, “is a _beautiful_ car,” and Robbie falls a little bit in love.

Of course, that might have a little to do with how her shirt’s just found its way to the backseat; his car’s not the only beautiful thing around here.

 

**animal**

Jemma’s cooing over a sixteen foot python like it’s a _puppy_ ; Daisy takes one look at his face and doubles over laughing.

 

**care**

Jemma has scars—lots of them. Robbie’s heard the story, from Daisy in passing and from Fitz in horrible drunken detail, so he knows to expect them and knows that the sons of bitches who gave them to her are dead. But all that knowledge doesn’t do shit to prepare him for the look on her face, a lot self-conscious and a little miserable, when he pauses over the scar between her breasts.

He missed his chance to teach the bastards who did this a lesson, but it looks like Jemma’s in need of one herself. By the end of the night, he’s made damn sure she knows her scars don’t make him (wouldn’t make _anyone_ ) want her any less.

 

**alone**

The deal is done and the devil’s gone—for good this time. Maybe it should feel weird, being alone in his skin after so long, but mostly Robbie’s thinking there’s nothing holding him back from making a move on Simmons anymore.

 

**reveal**

It’s not that the others _don’t_ understand Robbie’s mission of vengeance, it’s that they _won’t_. They’re SHIELD agents; they’re supposed to be better than hunting down and mercilessly slaughtering their enemies.

But Jemma lost the man she loved and suffered untold hours of torture, only to see Coulson kill Ward, Fitz kill Giyera, and Lincoln kill Hive. She has her own thirst for vengeance, a thirst that was thrice denied and will never be quenched, and from it springs a sense of kinship with Robbie.

He feels it too, she thinks—that or he simply agrees that the low neckline on this blouse is as flattering as she thinks; either way, his eyes remain on her all throughout the briefing.

 

**morning**

It’s been ages since Jemma woke so nicely, comfortably entwined with a sleep-warm man. The sun is shining through his bedroom windows, there’s a very pleasant ache between her thighs, and the quiet hum of the air conditioner is somehow reassuringly mundane.

If only Robbie weren’t such a blanket hog, it would be absolutely perfect.

As it is, she’s warm where she’s snuggled against him, but her other side is _freezing_ ; she cuddles closer to him and smiles as he stirs, dropping a kiss to his neck in the hopes it will keep him from noticing as she steals the blankets back.

It doesn’t, but that’s all right; in moments, he’s rolled them over and set to warming her up in a _much_ better way.


	71. time travel, ring

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> anonymous asked: "time travel, cuddling, and ring"

The ring feels strange on her finger.

Hardly surprising, that. It’s been years since she wore it—since she even knew where it _was_. She cast it into a random bin not long after her arrival at the Playground and it was weeks before she gave it another thought; for all she knows it’s sitting in a landfill somewhere.

…Does the Playground’s garbage go to a landfill? Funny; she’s never given it any thought before, but it’s not as though they have ( _had_ ) a regular pick-up.

Just the mental image of such an arrangement—of someone being assigned the chore of emptying the Playground’s countless bins and hauling the bags to sit on the curb outside the vacant lot the base is hidden under, to be collected by no doubt confused binmen—makes her giggle, and Grant’s fingers pause in the act of carding through her hair.

“Something funny?” he asks.

His voice is strange, too. Everything is, really. Here in the past, nothing is quite right; not her ring, not her husband, not their little flat in Rome.

“No,” she says, curling a little closer. He’s warm and solid, familiar but not; a relic of her past, brought to life and returned to her through a freak lab accident she has no hope of reversing. “Just a thought.”

Grant hums, but doesn’t press the issue. He’s not stupid; she knows he’s realized there’s something off about her. If she hadn’t suspected as much from the look on his face all afternoon, she’d have known at dinner.

Remembering that whole production—all of the reminiscing he did, bringing up old memories just to see whether she’d be able to share in them, whether he could catch her off-guard with something she should know but didn’t—renews the heartache she’s been fighting all day, and Jemma shifts, bringing herself closer still to Grant. He adjusts his hold to allow the movement, keeping her steady as she drapes herself across him, but otherwise doesn’t react.

Everything hurts.

The truth is, there’s nothing wrong with her ring—or with Grant or his voice or their home. The problem is _Jemma_.

Six years on from this little flat, she doesn’t quite fit anymore.

Part—most, if she’s feeling petty—of the blame for that lies at Grant’s feet. He’s a murderer and a traitor and a monster; that he hasn’t yet committed the worst of his crimes doesn’t make them any less real to her, and even as she revels in his touch a part of her is recoiling, horrified at her own comfort.

But it’s more than just Grant. It’s the losses she’s suffered in the past—or the next, depending on one’s point of view—six years; the betrayals she’s known, the things she’s seen…the things she’s _done_. She’s a long way from the naïve young woman she was when she lived in this flat, when the worst thing she could imagine was losing Grant to his work, learning of his death weeks after the fact and being left to grieve alone.

That she _did_ lose him—multiple times, and in ways so much worse than her twenty-four-year-old self would ever have thought to fear—only makes this whole thing that much harder.

She’s changed. She’s changed since this flat, since the Bus, since throwing her ring away—since Maveth.

The man she’s cuddling is a lie, a fabrication designed to fool SHIELD, and she doesn’t know what’s changed within her—what Maveth or Hive or possibly just _time_ broke—that she’s not yet thrown that in his face. That she chose to stay, to reminisce over dinner and then climb into bed with him instead of running as far and as fast as she could.

…That’s a lie.

“Jem?” Grant’s hand drags slowly up her back, sending a wave of familiar warmth through her. “Are you planning on telling me what’s wrong?”

Jemma shifts again, folding her hands on his chest and setting her chin on them so as to watch his face. His brow is furrowed a bit, his eyes dark as they search hers. He’s broadcasting concern, but she can see the suspicion there, hiding beneath the cover he wears like a mask.

He’s a monster…but he hasn’t done anything monstrous yet. Not really.

She has no intention of allowing the next six years to unfold the same way. There’s too much pain ahead, too much death, to simply stand back and let things run their course.

Why not start the changes here?

“Maybe,” she says. His heart beats against her hands, slightly too fast but still steady. He’s warm. Alive. “I don’t know if you’d believe me if I told you.”

He sinks a hand into her hair to massage the back of her neck, easing the strain her position is putting on it. “Try me.”

It would be so easy for him to kill her. If he _does_ believe her and decides she knows too much…

But for all the pain he caused her, for all the ways he betrayed her, she’s _missed_ him. She’s missed his touch, his kiss—missed wearing his ring.

And what’s the point of time travel, really, if not to seek a second chance?

“I started today,” she says, “in 2018.”


	72. Patriot reaction

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> anonymous asked: "a n y t h i n g biospec, please!" and I wrote an immediate response to 4x10: The Patriot

“Sir?”

“Yeah.” Grant tosses the file aside, more than a little relieved for the excuse. Worst part of being the head of HYDRA—especially now that he’s doing it in secret—is the fucking paperwork. He’s done what he can to minimize it, but some things really do need to be in writing, as little as he likes it. “Come in, Repin.”

She does, but stops well back from his desk…which means she’s probably got bad news. For some reason, everyone always acts like they expect him to shoot the messenger.

“Our spy in SHIELD’s made contact, sir,” she reports. “It turns out the op in West Virginia was blown because they managed to break the asset Quake captured.”

Not unexpected—and honestly not actually all that bad, as far as news goes. The only other possibilities Grant was coming up with involved SHIELD getting its hands on an actual clairvoyant; now _that_ would suck.

“Figures. Torture?” he asks, leaning back in his chair. It might not technically be in the SHIELD playbook, but Grant has personal experience with how willing Coulson is to cross lines when it comes to agents he cares about.

He might not be the Director anymore, but that kind of attitude tends to trickle down through the ranks.

“Not exactly,” Repin says. She taps at her tablet for a second, then nods at his computer. “I’ve sent you the video file our spy passed along. You might find it interesting.”

Grant hits play and—

_“It wasn’t just HYDRA who had operatives within SHIELD. It was the other way around, too. I learned a lot undercover. I can’t deny HYDRA had some very persuasive interrogation methods. You like statistics. Here’s one for you: there’s a one hundred percent chance I get inside your head. The question is how long you’ll live afterwards.”_

_“You’re so weak, you bring in this_ woman _to scare me?”_

_“The last HYDRA operative we captured didn’t take Agent Simmons seriously, either.”_

_“What’s that saying you’re so fond of at HYDRA?”_

Interesting’s one word for it. _Really fucking hot_ is another.

“Okay,” he says, hitting pause. He’s gonna be revisiting that footage later. “I can’t say I saw that coming.”

“Our spy indicated that it’s not a real head,” Repin offers helpfully. “It’s from the robot that attacked the base.”

“Good to know,” he says—and it really is. SHIELD going around decapitating his agents is really the last thing he needs. “Anything else?”

“Only that Agent Simmons is more highly ranked than our previous intel indicated.” She checks her tablet quickly. “Either second or third in line to Mace, it’s unclear.”

“Huh.” Grant considers the paused footage, taking in the slight smirk Simmons is wearing as the asset crumbles. “Power looks good on her.”

Repin’s face stays studiously blank. She doesn’t say anything.

“New orders,” he decides. “I want Simmons here—ASAP. Tell our spy to lead her into a trap at the first available opportunity.”

“Yes, sir,” Repin says, making a note on her tablet. “Anything else?”

He waves her off. “That’s it. But send Markham in on your way out, will you?”

They have new plans to make. It won’t be quick or easy—it’ll set their timeline back for sure—but if there’s one thing Grant has, it’s patience.

He wants Simmons on his side. He’ll play as long a game as he needs to.


	73. pillow (Jemma/Will)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> anonymous asked: "pillow for jemmawill 5 mins"

“We have a proble—ohmigod!”

Someone, Jemma decides, is conspiring against her.

“It’s all right, Daisy,” she calls, interrupting the rather high-pitched stream of apologies sounding from the other side of her now-closed door. Beneath her, Will—no more pleased than she to be interrupted yet again—wears an expression of utter disagreement. “Just give us a moment to compose ourselves, please.”

“Yeah, sure, absolutely,” Daisy calls back. “I’ll just be…out here. Waiting.”

“Of course you will,” Jemma says to herself. With regret, she shifts off of Will, fully empathizing with the sad little noise he makes.

“You know, I never thought I’d say this—” Will thumps his head against the pillow “—but I miss the other planet.”

“Oh, hush,” Jemma says, though she certainly understands where he’s coming from. It’s been four days since he was cleared for sexual activity (and this after _months_ of recovery), and they still have yet to get past heavy petting.

Either her entire team’s timing is record-breaking levels of awful, or they’re being actively and maliciously sabotaged.

“I’m just saying,” he mutters. “At least It had the decency to leave us alone most of the time.”

Although she makes a show of rolling her eyes at him, she’s actually rather pleased by the comment. It’s a good sign—a _very_ good sign—that he’s settled enough to _joke_ about the creature that tormented him for fourteen years. He’s well on his way to recovery…and as that’s only possible in the first place because of the team’s efforts to rescue them, she’ll forgive her friends all the interruptions in the world.

“Stop whining and get dressed,” she orders, lobbing a shirt at him. “Whatever brought Daisy to our door, it sounded urgent.”

“ _This_ is urgent,” he argues good-naturedly, even as he rolls out of bed and reaches for his jeans.

Jemma deliberately turns her back, the better not to be tempted by his physique. Months of plentiful food, a properly balanced diet, and some hastily invented drugs have combined to begin to counteract years of malnutrition—and she’s only human.

“I don’t disagree,” she says. “We’ll just…quickly tackle this latest crisis and then get back to it, hm?”

“Yeah,” Will says, “I’m sure it’ll be just that easy.”

Despite his grousing, he’s smiling when—now fully dressed—she turns to face him.

“What?” she asks. “What are you smiling at?”

“You,” he says, and closes the distance between them with four quick steps. “I love you.”

Oh, he’s not playing _fair_. He knows she can’t resist him when he says that.

“I love you, too.” She fists her hands in his shirt and pulls herself onto her toes to kiss him, quick and chaste. “I’m sorry my team is ruining our sex life.”

His hand rests at the small of her back, warm and steadying and _here_. She has nightmares sometimes about the day they were rescued—those seconds that stretched into eternity where all she could see was sand, where she was terrified that the creature had gotten him and she’d be going home alone.

But It didn’t get him. He’s here and he’s getting better and _someday_ they’ll have sex again.

She hopes.

“That’s okay,” he says. He bends to kiss her—just as quick but not at all chaste—and then steps back, catching her hand to pull her to the door. “You’re worth the wait.”


	74. author ID challenge

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> JD, Mir, and I each wrote a drabble for the prompt “Conversations on the boat about obeying orders after their rescue by the Moroccan Field office in FZZT” and challenged our followers on tumblr to identify which of us wrote which drabble. Below is mine.

Even wrapped in three blankets, Jemma can’t stop shaking.

This, she suspects, is down to the fact that her shaking has nothing to do with a November swim in the north Atlantic and everything to do with forty thousand feet of open air. The hot shower, the heated towels, even the SHIELD-issue hoodie and pajama pants—they’re all useless against memories.

Something like a sob catches in her throat. She pulls her blankets closer.

“Simmons, are yo—hey. _Simmons_.”

Ward moves quickly; before she even has time to register his entrance, he’s settled himself on her bed and hauled her into his arms. He means to be comforting, she’s sure, but all it does is remind her of her fall. She sobs.

“Deep breaths, Simmons, that’s right,” he says. “Everything’s fine. Come on, breathe with me, you’re okay.”

The ship they’re on is no mere fishing dingy, but while it comes equipped with a number of conveniences and luxuries—hence the hot shower and the private room—it’s still, in the end, a glorified battleship. Every surface is metal and Ward’s words seem to bounce off the walls, making it sound as though they come from miles away. It reminds her of those last few minutes, straining to hear Fitz’s muttering over the hum in her bones, and only makes her cry harder.

“Okay,” Ward says. “That’s okay. You can cry it out if you need to.”

Need is one thing; want is another. She doesn’t want to cry—doesn’t want to sit here and dwell and—

“You saved me,” she says, wrenching her thoughts away from everything else. “You—you jumped after me.”

It’s the first moment she’s had to truly consider it. Between her abrupt awakening in the middle of the ocean, the panic attack he had to talk her down from, and being pulled onto the ship and immediately ushered into the shower, she hasn’t had the chance to think of anything but the day’s terror.

Now, though…

Ward shrugs a little. “Just doing my job.”

“No,” she says, pulling back to meet his eyes. She swipes impatiently at her own, brushing away her remaining tears. “No, it wasn’t your job at all, was it?”

“What do you mean?” he asks, frowning—but it’s evasive, not confused.

“I mean it makes no sense whatsoever that you jumped after me,” she says, leaning back even farther. “It makes no sense that I had to jump at all. My presence aboard the Bus put the rest of you in significant danger; by any and every SHIELD protocol—”

His expression goes dark, so suddenly that the rest of her sentence sticks in her throat. Nonetheless, the unspoken truth hangs between them: she should’ve been _thrown_ from the Bus hours before she had the thought to jump.

“Coulson never would’ve ordered it,” he says, face softening. “You know that.”

“I do,” she admits; it’s no secret their commanding officer is something of a maverick. He does as he wills—at least so far as he can stretch his own interpretation of his orders. “But that doesn’t change the fact that your _job_ was to protect the team by—by disposing of a clear and present threat: me.”

Ward is silent for a long, long moment. “I never would’ve done it. Orders or no.”

“What do you mean?” Surely he can’t be suggesting—

“I could never do that,” he says. “Not to you.”

With that, he draws her close once more, and Jemma—shaken but thoughtful—curls into his comforting embrace.

If nothing else, he’s managed to thoroughly distract her.

**Author's Note:**

> As ever, I won't guarantee a fill, but if you want to send me a prompt, you're welcome to do so [here](http://shineyma.tumblr.com/ask).


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